Dr. Burke graduated from Loyola University Chicago College of Dental Surgery in 1992. After graduation Dr. Burke worked with his father, specializing in full mouth reconstruction including crown and bridge, full mouth extractions and removable prosthetics. In addition, Dr Burke helped families and their children by providing dental care as the town dentist of Cicero, Illinois. These families had no dental care, so Dr. Burke helped them by providing basic dental care, fillings, and extractions when teeth were non restorable.

In 1996, Dr. Burke left Illinois to move to California and opened a practice from scratch. His practice was diverse, providing services such as general dentistry, simple and surgical extractions, endodontics, periodontics, and complex prosthodontic care.

All this time, Dr. Burke had a passion for surgery. He never had a desire to pursue oral surgery exclusively as a career because he liked the diversity as a general dentist to be able to pick and choose the surgeries, he knew that he could successfully complete. This allowed him to keep the safety of the patient in mind, while at the same time perform the restorative aspect to complete the cases he tackled.

Something was missing though, Dr. Burke never felt totally complete in his goals and endeavors. Dr. Burke was referring a lot of implants and extractions that also had socket grafting out of his office. Even though Dr. Burke did lots of extractions, he did not do socket preservation and implant placement. He asked a fellow specialist that he referred to at the time what they thought of him starting to place implants in his practice. The response received was that it’s very difficult, very invasive, to stay with what you are doing because it was dangerous. With that, Dr. Burke was discouraged and forgot about pursuing a surgical implant education. At that time in 2000, he kept on just doing what he did, his general dentistry and extractions. From 2000 on Dr. Burke learned a lot about implant prosthetics and learned how to convert all-on restorations after watching the oral surgeon he referred to perform the surgery portion.

By 2012, Dr Burke was determined to learn how to place implants. A local rep asked him to come as a guest and learn to place implants. This was a hands-on class placing implants through a surgical guide on a model at the same time learning the ins and outs of Cone Beam 3D technology. Dr. Burke was so excited that he asked the speaker where was there a live surgical implant placement class that he could take. Taking his advice Dr. Burke called and signed up and placed his first implant on a live patient a month later. He also observed other doctors performing and placing implants on other patients. Dr. Burke was so excited that he signed up for a complex guided implant course that was a few months later. The following week after the class Dr. Burke started placing implants. After the guided course, he performed his first full arch extractions, All on 4® implant placement and immediate load which was only 7 months after he placed his very first implant.

In 2014, Dr. Burke was asked to help mentor other general practitioners learning how to place implants. He has helped teach doctors for the last six years teaching simple implant placement, extractions and socket preservation, to full arch extractions immediate All on X implant procedures.

Dr. Burke realized that his newfound love was to be an educator in Implant Dentistry. Even though he loved teaching he did not want to travel and be away from his family and home. After Covid hit in 2019, Dr. Burke was approached and asked if he would like to do local classes and give live surgery CE. He was asked to develop a class that taught GPs how to successfully and safely place dental implants in their practices. With the help of many supporters the Burke Implant Academy was founded.

Dr. Burke started the Academy as a passion. He does not believe it to be work, even though it takes hard work and planning to run a continuing education course. As Dr. Burke says, it isn’t work if you love what you do.