Academic honors and recognitions that Burggren has received include: Fellow, American Physiological Society; American Physiological Society Krogh Lecturer; Mercator Fellow, Germany; Fellow of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science; Regents’ Researcher Citation of the Nevada Board of Regents; National Science Foundation Advisory Board Member, Biology Directorate; Distinguished Visiting Professor of the Mexican Academy of Sciences; Invited Participant in the Commandant’s National Security Program, US Army War College, Rector Honoris Causa (Honorary University President) of The Autonomous University of the State of Mexico.

Burggren has published more than 300 journal articles and book chapters, and has written edited or co-edited nearly 20 books, including a widely used textbook in Animal Physiology that has been translated into several languages. According to Google Scholar he has an H index of 71 and >17,000 citations. Additionally, Burggren has been the major advisor of more than 50 post-doctoral fellows and graduate students during his career. Burggren has been Department Chair, Dean and Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs, holding this last position at UNT until his return to faculty in 2015. As a result, he has deep experience in the assembly and management of large, complex research and administrative teams, including those pursuing and successfully acquiring both public and private research funding.

Burggren’s biological research projects have been funded by multiple agencies during his career, including a highly unusual ~46 years of continuous federal agency funding.  He currently is supported both by the National Science Foundation (public) through 2026 and by the Navy through the Department of Defense through 2027.

He received his B.Sc. degree from the Univ. of Calgary, Canada, and his Ph.D. from the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England.