< Arkansas Children's Blog

Meet the Champion: Dr. Richard Kurten, Winner of the 2019 Dr. Robert H. Fiser, Jr. Research Achievement Award

Published date: May 23, 2019

Every two years, Arkansas Children's honors physicians, scientists and clinical teams who exemplify what it means to be champions for children at the Ruth Olive Beall Recognition Awards. The Dr. Robert H. Fiser, Jr. Research Achievement Award is awarded to a scientist at Arkansas Children's Research Institute who has distinguished himself or herself through extraordinary scientific research that will have a lasting impact on the health, development, and well-being of children and their families.

The 2019 recipient of the Fiser Award is Dr. Richard Kurten, a consummate scientist who excels as an educator, researcher and advocate. Dr. Kurten received his doctorate in Cell Biology at Baylor College of Medicine in 1991. He completed a post-doctoral fellowship in endocrinology at the University of California, San Diego in 1996.

In 1996, he joined the UAMS Department of Physiology and Biophysics as an Assistant Professor. From 2000 to 2011, he served as the Director of the Confocal and Digital Microscopy Laboratory at UAMS and currently serves as an associate professor in the Department of Physiology and Biophysics.

In 2003, he established the Lung Cell Biology Laboratory at Arkansas Children's Research Institute, with the primary goal of advancing research in asthma and respiratory disease. Here's more about this award-winning collaborator, mentor and gifted scientist.

Learn more about Dr. Kurten receiving the award by watching this video.