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Honored Speaker: Christine Seymour PhD
Chris is a Senior Director in Global Regulatory Chemistry and Manufacturing Controls at Takeda leading global regulatory strategy and implementation. Previously, she was at Pfizer Inc in Global Regulatory Chemistry and Manufacturing Controls leading portfolios of projects across all phases of drug development, commercial applications and established products. Early in her career she led chemical process research teams at Pharmacia and G.D. Searle. She has Chemical Engineering degrees from Lehigh University (BS) and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst (PhD) as well as a Regulatory Affairs MS from Temple University.
She is active on university advisory boards. Chris serves on the Lehigh University College of Engineering Advisory Council (Chair 2021- 2023, Member 2017-now), the Lehigh University Department of Chemical Engineering Advisory Council (Chair 2016 to 2021, Member 2021-now) the University of Arizona, Chemical and Environmental Engineering Advisory Council (Member 2020-now) and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst Department of Chemical Engineering Advisory Board (Member 2008-now).
Chris has enjoyed participating in AIChE leadership for thirty years and was AIChE President in 2018. She was also Secretary of the Board of Directors (2012-2015), Chair of Forum Formation Committee and first Chair of the Pharmaceutical Discovery, Development, and Manufacturing Forum (2012-2014), Society of Biological Engineering Board of Directors (2012-current), Chair of EBPC (2012), Board of Directors (2009-2011), Spring MPC (2008), Spring Vice MPC (2005), and Process Development Division Chair (2003-2005). She is the recipient of the 2022 AIChE Van Antwerpen Award, 2012 AIChE Epstein Award for Technical Programming and is an AIChE
Fellow.
Keynote Speaker: Lehigh President Joseph J. Helble
Joseph J. Helble became Lehigh University’s 15th president in 2021.
Under Helble’s leadership, Lehigh completed its first comprehensive university-wide strategic
planning process in 15 years. Inspiring the Future Makers is a blueprint for Lehigh’s next
decade. Building on the university’s historic strengths, the plan deepens Lehigh’s commitment to
a broadly interdisciplinary education that is inclusive of engineering and business in a dynamic
academic and research environment in which the “future makers” – students, staff, faculty, and
alumni – are empowered to do their best work. Over the first two years of implementation of the
strategy, Lehigh has established three university-wide research centers, seen research support
grow by more than 50%, been recognized as an R1 institution by the Carnegie Classification
system and launched an interdisciplinary exploratory first semester that allows students to draw
from engineering, business and the liberal arts in a structured, integrated program.
Helble came to Lehigh from Dartmouth College, where he served as provost from 2018-2021.
Prior to becoming provost, he served for 13 years as dean of Dartmouth’s Thayer School of
Engineering. He has also worked as a research scientist at Physical Sciences Inc.; as a faculty
member and later chair of chemical engineering at the University of Connecticut; and as the
2004-2005 American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Roger Revelle
Fellow, in which capacity he spent a year addressing technology and environmental policy
initiatives in the office of U.S. Senator Joseph Lieberman.
Helble has served on numerous EPA Science Advisory Board panels and was chair of the
American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) Engineering Deans’ Public Policy
Committee. He is a recipient of an NSF CAREER Award, an outstanding young faculty award
from the University of Connecticut School of Engineering, and the AAAS Barnard Award. In
2017 he was named a Fellow of AAAS, and in 2024 a Fellow of AIChE.
Helble is the author of over 100 publications on air pollution, aerosols, and nanoscale ceramics,
and he holds three U.S. patents. In 2014 he and three Dartmouth colleagues received the National
Academy of Engineering Bernard M. Gordon Prize.
Helble holds a BS in chemical engineering from Lehigh University and a PhD in chemical
engineering from MIT.
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