Jeff Chalmers named AIChE Fellow

Professor Jeffrey Chalmers has been elected a fellow of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE), the world’s leading organization for chemical engineering professionals comprising 60,000 members from more than 110 countries. The AIChE Board of Directors approved Chalmers' election to Fellow, the highest grade of membership, in October 2021.

Candidates are nominated by their peers and must have significant chemical engineering experience (generally 25 years), made significant contributions to the field of chemical engineering and demonstrated significant service to the profession. The honor reaffirms the high esteem with which a nominee's colleagues and peers view their distinctive professional achievements and accomplishments.

Professor Chalmers has been a leading researcher in mammalian bioprocess engineering on an international scale for over 30 yrs. His work in applying chemical engineering principles to bioprocess fluid dynamics and bioreactor scale-up significantly improved the way mammalian cell culture engineering is undertaken around the world in both industry and academia, and helped to solve many of the bottleneck problems of the biopharmaceutical industry. The importance of his contribution is underscored by the fact that nearly 40% of all new pharmaceuticals are biologically produced and their production is based in part on some of the discoveries made by Professor Chalmers and his students over the years. 

For over 25 years Chalmers has also led a multi-centered collaborative research effort involving the characterization and exploitation of the magnetic susceptibility of biological cells and particles, with a number of detection and therapeutic applications.   

Professor Chalmers’ achievements were recognized internationally in 2014 by the highest and most prestigious award in the field - the Cell Culture Engineering Award from Engineering Conferences International. He was subsequently asked to co-chair the Cell Culture Engineering meeting three times. As an expert in bioprocess fluid dynamics and bioreactor scale-up and applications of magnetism to cell characterization and separation, he is frequently called as an expert witness in patent disputes. 

Chalmers is also a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, which represents the top 2% of biomedical researchers. Earlier in his career, he was awarded the prestigious NSF National Young Investigator Award.

Chalmers will be introduced along with other new fellows in a future issue of CEP and on ChEnected, AIChE’s news website.