The Hunter-Bamman Award Lecture is designed to honor the work of two pioneers of exercise research at UAB - Gary Hunter, PhD, Professor Emeritus Department of Nutrition Sciences and Marcas Bamman, PhD, Professor Emeritus, Department of Cell, Developmental and Integrative Biology and Founding Director of UCEM.

The Gary R. Hunter Award was given each spring from 2013 to 2020 as part of the Distinguished Lecture series presented by the UAB Center for Exercise Medicine. The award was named in honor of Dr. Gary Hunter, Distinguished Professor in the UAB Department of Human Studies. Dr. Hunter has been an international leader in exercise adaptation, energy metabolism and body composition research. He has more than 250 peer-reviewed publications and has had National Institutes of Health funding throughout his career. The Gary R. Hunter Award recognizes Dr. Hunter's contributions through more than 30 years at UAB and his goal as a researcher of passing knowledge along to others. 

In 2021, UCEM renamed the lecture to the Hunter-Bamman Award Lecture to continue honoring Dr. Hunter while also recognizing the accomplishments of Dr. Bamman. Dr. Bamman was instrumental in increasing support and awareness for exercise medicine research both at UAB and across the nation. His research on exercise spans from biological underpinnings to clinical outcomes. He has been fostering and directing research for more than 30 years with funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Department of Veterans Affairs, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and the Department of Defense. He is a Fellow of the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) and served on the ACSM Board of Trustees and ACSM Science Integration and Leadership Committee. He also served as Chair of the 2021 ACSM World Congress on the Basic Science of Exercise in Regenerative Medicine.

On the UAB campus, Dr. Bamman was responsible for helping establish the > 6000 sq. ft Exercise Clinical Trials facility, and he was also a key driver in garnering NIH support for the current Molecular Transducers of Physical Activity Consortium (MoTrPAC), a Common Fund supported program designed to elucidate the molecular adaptations responsible for the wide variety of benefits of exercise on health.