Dr. Burhan is a Geriatric Psychiatrist, and Endowed Chair for Applied Mental Health Research at the Ontario Shores Centre of Mental Health Sciences in the Whitby Ontario, and Associate Professor in Psychiatry at the University of Toronto. Also, he is Adjunct Research Professor in Psychiatry and Neurosciences at Western University and Geriatric Psychiatrist with the Operational Stress Injury Clinic at Saint Joseph’s Health Care and an associate scientist at the MacDonald Franklin Operational Stress Injury Research Centre and the Lawson Health Research Institute in London, Ontario.

He is the principal investigator of several pragmatic clinical trials in the field of neuropsychiatry of dementia and therapeutic brain stimulation for resistant mental illness across the life span, as well as a participant in several initiatives to develop guidelines to standardize definitions, assessments, and management of treatment-resistant mental illnesses. He carries peer supported research funding, presented and published in the above areas of work.

After he graduated from Baghdad University's Medical College, he did a fellowship in basic neurosciences at the Montreal Neurological Institute, a residency in psychiatry at the University of Rochester, and advanced training in geriatric neuropsychiatry at Western University.

He has been a member of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada since 2003 and in Geriatric Psychiatry since 2013, a diplomat in Neuropsychiatry from the United Council for Neurological Subspecialties in the United States since 2007, and a Master's of Science degree in community health from the Dalla Lana School of Public Health and the University of Toronto since 2015. 

He is a clinician educator and researcher whose work has focused on complex mental health presentations in old age and therapeutic brain stimulation.