Education

Ph.D., Cornell University, 1988

B.S., University of California at Berkeley, 1983

B.A., Westmont College, 1983

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Professor Chalmers is currently researching intrinsic magnetization cell separation and immunomagnetic cell separation, cancer detection, and bioengineering.

He has been the leading international researcher in Mammalian Bioprocess Engineering for over 30 years, as evidenced by his numerous transformative publications. Professor Chalmers' contributions have changed the way mammalian cell culture engineering is undertaken around the world in both industry and academia. The importance of this industry is underscored by the fact that nearly half of all new pharmaceuticals are biologically produced and their production is based in part on some of the discoveries made by Professor Chalmers' students over the years.

Specific contributions include major innovations in bioprocessing technologies for the 21st century, including:

• Addressing one of large-scale mammalian cell culture's earliest and most challenging obstacles: shear sensitivity
• Identifying specific chemical agents that can protect cells from bubble rupture by preventing cell-bubble attachment
• Progressively working towards the quantification of hydrodynamics forces in bioprocessing and its relationship to the hydrodynamic sensitivities frequently used in mammalian cell lines
• Designing a microfluidic apparatus that approximates the hydrodynamic conditions in bioprocess equipment through which shear sensitivity of different cell lines at different culture conditions can be quantified, enabling him to be among the first to quantitatively show that mammalians of these cell lines are very robust mechanically in the context of bioprocessing.

In the coming decades, cell separations will become increasingly important for the next wave of biologics, both for examining diseased cells as well as treating disease with cell therapies.