CHAD A. MIRKIN, PHD
NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY
JOHN P. MCGOVERN SCIENCE & SOCIETY AWARD
For his pioneering contributions to nanochemistry that have led to inventions that benefit society and monumental efforts in entrepreneurship, education, public understanding, and national service/public policy.
Biography
Dr. Chad A. Mirkin is the Director of the International Institute for Nanotechnology and the George B. Rathmann Professor of Chemistry, Chemical & Biological Engineering, Biomedical Engineering, Materials Science & Engineering, and Medicine at Northwestern University. He is a chemist and a world-renowned nanoscience expert, who is known for his discovery and development of spherical nucleic acids (SNAs) and SNA-based biodetection and therapeutic schemes and Dip-Pen Nanolithography (DPN) and related cantilever-free nanopatterning and materials discovery methodologies, and contributions to supramolecular chemistry and nanoparticle synthesis.
Mirkin received his B.S. degree from Dickinson College (1986) and a Ph.D. degree from the Penn State University (1989). He was an NSF Postdoctoral Fellow at the MIT prior to becoming a professor at Northwestern University in 1991. He has authored over 840 manuscripts and over 1,200 patent applications worldwide (over 400 issued) and founded multiple companies. Mirkin has been recognized with over 230 national and international awards, including the Kabiller Prize in Nanoscience and Nanomedicine, the SCI Perkin Medal, the Wilhelm Exner Medal, the Dan David Prize, and the National Academy of Sciences Sackler Prize in Convergence Research. He served for eight years on the President’s Council of Advisors on Science & Technology, and he is one of very few scientists to be elected to all three US National Academies. Mirkin has served on the Editorial Advisory Boards of over 30 scholarly journals, and he is the founding editor of the journal Small. He was an Associate Editor of J. Am. Chem. Soc. and is a Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA Editorial Board Member. He has given over 870 invited lectures and educated over 300 graduate students and postdoctoral fellows, of whom over 120 are now faculty members at top institutions around the world.