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“Dr. Kwon’s accomplishments in the field of SCI/D have been monumental. The fact that he is still in the prime of his career means that he will continue to lead efforts to cure paralysis and improve the lives of those affected by SCI/D.”
Dr. Brian K. Kwon has been announced as a recipient of the 2023 Fellow of ASIA (FASIA) Award. Fellowship in the American Spinal Injury Association is an honor bestowed by the Board of Directors in recognition of longstanding dedication to, and distinguished accomplishments within, the fields of spinal cord injury research, clinical practice, education, and/or advocacy and for longstanding active membership in and service to ASIA.
Dr. Brian Kwon is a Professor in the Department of Orthopaedics at the University of British Columbia, the Canada Research Chair in Spinal Cord Injury, and holds the Dvorak Chair in Spine Trauma. He is an attending spine surgeon at Vancouver General Hospital, a Level 1 trauma center and the provincial referral center for acute spinal cord injury. As a surgeon-scientist and the current Chair of the AO Spine Knowledge Forum in Spinal Cord Injury, he is particularly interested in the bi-directional process of translational research for spinal cord injury. He leads a research program focused on translation at the International Collaboration on Repair Discoveries (ICORD), where he is the Associate Director of Clinical Research. He has worked extensively on establishing biomarkers of human SCI to understand the biology of human injury and to better stratify injury severity and improve the prediction of neurologic outcome. Dr. Kwon has led the development of the porcine model of SCI and is utilizing this for both bench-to-bedside and bedside-back-to-bench translational studies. He founded the International Spinal Cord Injury Biobank (ISCIB) to share valuable human biospecimens with scientists around the world in an effort to accelerate the research community’s understanding of the biology of human SCI. And he has had a long-standing interest in establishing in techniques for better monitoring the hemodynamic status of the injured spinal cord, including the use of lumbar intrathecal catheters to monitor spinal cord perfusion pressure.
In 2020, for his significant contributions to the SCI community, Dr. Kwon was honored by the Craig H. Neilsen Foundation with their inaugural $1M Visionary Prize. Dr. Kwon delivered the Distinguished G. Heiner Sell Lecture at the 2022 ASIA Annual Meeting in May 2022.
2023 FASIA award recipients will be honored on April 17 during the 50th ASIA Annual Scientific Meeting in Atlanta.
