USask leader and researcher honoured in Portugal with career recognition award

University of Saskatchewan (USask) researcher, professor, and interim associate provost, health, Dr. Adam Baxter-Jones (PhD), is the 2024 recipient of the Tanner Memorial Medal. Baxter-Jones was awarded the medal by the Society for the Study of Human Biology (SSHB) for his career and lifelong work on children’s growth and development related to sports and physical activity.

Dr. James Tanner (1920-2010) was a co-founder of the Society for the Study of Human Biology and one of the leading figures in human growth and development research.

“It was an honour to be presented this medal by one of my former USask doctoral students, Dr. Lauren Sherar (PhD), who is now the acting dean of the School of Sport, Exercise and Health Studies and a professor of physical activity and public health at Loughborough University in the United Kingdom,” Baxter-Jones said.

Baxter-Jones was recognized for his work during the SSHB’s Human Biology of Movement Behaviours conference at the University of Porto in Portugal, where he also delivered the Tanner Lecture entitled Maturation and performance: Enhancing Tanner’s legacy.

Baxter-Jones joined the University of Saskatchewan faculty in 2000 and has held a number of leadership roles during his time on campus. These positions include associate dean (2008-10, 2011-12) and acting dean (2010-11) at the College of Kinesiology and interim dean at the College of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies (2013-17). He currently serves the university as the interim associate provost, health, in the USask Health Sciences.

Dr. Baxter-Jones’s program of research concerns the growth and maturation of children pertaining to body composition development in relation to physical activity, sport, and exercise. He is a recipient of the 2015 University of Saskatchewan’s Distinguished Researcher Award and the 2012 Saskatchewan Health Research Foundation Achievement Award.

In addition to his current role as currently the section editor for Human Morphology, he is also a member of the Canadian Institute of Health’s (CIHR) College of Reviewers and the chair of CIHR’s Social & Developmental Aspects of Children’s and Youth’s Health (CHI) committee.

In 2021, Dr. Baxter-Jones was named in a Stanford University report as one of the world’s top 2 per cent most-cited scientists in various disciplines. His research work has been cited approximately 15,000 times across hundreds of papers, including in prestigious journals such as Nature and The Lancet.