The Department of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering is pleased to welcome Christopher Burcham to the faculty as a Professor of the Practice.
Prior to joining Illinois, Burcham spent over 23 years in the pharmaceutical process design and development field. As an Executive Director in the Synthetic Molecule Design and Development (SMDD) Department at Eli Lilly & Company, Burcham led the Particle Engineering group in SMDD where he was responsible for the technical supervision and advancement of both crystallization and absorption enabling platforms.
Burcham's research focuses on separations sciences, primarily in the discipline of crystallization and other particle formation technologies. This fall, he will teach the online sections of two M.Eng. core courses, Applied Mathematics in CHBE and Chemical Kinetics & Catalysis, and will contribute to the professional development of the M.Eng. program. In the spring, he will teach a separations course as well as a new class that he is developing on pharmaceutical engineering.
“I am very excited to be joining the faculty at the U. of I. The university has given me so much – had it not been for the terrific education that I received as an undergrad in the Chem Eng department many years ago, I would not have had the experiences that I have over my lifetime. The education that I had opened doors to me that I never knew existed,” Burcham said about returning to the department as a faculty member.
Burcham is a Fellow in the American Institute of Engineers and currently serves on the Programming Committee for the Association of Crystallization Technology. He holds three patents, has more than 50 peer reviewed publications, and has given over 100 external presentations. He received his B.S. in chemical engineering from the University of Illinois (1991), NJ Master of Arts in chemical engineering from Princeton University (1994), and Ph.D. in chemical engineering from Princeton University (Saville, 1998).