Dr. Chad A. Mirkin is the Director of the International Institute for Nanotechnology, the George B. Rathmann Professor of Chemistry, Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering, Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, and Professor of Medicine.

Professor Mirkin is a chemist and a world renowned nanoscience expert, who is known for his development of nanoparticle-based biodetection schemes, the invention of Dip-Pen Nanolithography, and contributions to supramolecular chemistry. He is the author of over 360 manuscripts and over 350 patents and applications, and the founder of two companies, Nanosphere and NanoInk, which are commercializing nanotechnology applications in the life science and semiconductor industries. At present, he is listed as one of the top 10 most cited chemists in the world, and is the top most cited nanomedicine researcher in the world.

Dr. Mirkin has been recognized for his accomplishments with over 50 national and international awards. These include the Havinga Medal, the Gustavus John Esselen Award, the Biomedical Engineering Society's Distinguished Achievement Award, a Department of Defense NSSEFF Award, the Pittsburgh Analytical Chemistry Award, the ACS Inorganic Nanoscience Award, the iCON Innovator of the Year Award, a NIH Director’s Pioneer Award, the Collegiate Inventors Award, the National Inventors Hall of Fame (2002, 2004), an Honorary Doctorate Degree from Dickinson College, the Pennsylvania State University Outstanding Science Alumni Award, the ACS Nobel Laureate Signature Award for Graduate Education in Chemistry, a Dickinson College Metzger-Conway Fellowship, the 2003 Raymond and Beverly Sackler Prize in the Physical Sciences, the Feynman Prize in Nanotechnology, the Leo Hendrick Baekeland Award, Crain’s Chicago Business “40 under 40 Award,” the Discover 2000 Award for Technological Innovation, I-Street Magazine’s Top 5 List for Leading Academics in Technology, the Materials Research Society Young Investigator Award, the ACS Award in Pure Chemistry, the PLU Fresenius Award, the Harvard University E. Bright Wilson Prize, the BF Goodrich Collegiate Inventors Award, the Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Award, the DuPont Young Professor Award, the NSF Young Investigator Award, the Naval Young Investigator Award, the Beckman Young Investigator Award, and the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation New Faculty Award. 

He is a Member of the National Academy of Engineering and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Dr. Mirkin has served on the Editorial Advisory Boards of over twenty scholarly journals. At present he is a member of the Editorial Advisory Boards of Accounts of Chemical Research, Advanced Materials, Angewandte Chemie, BioMacromolecules, Macromolecular Bioscience, SENSORS, Encyclopedia of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, Chemistry-A European Journal, Chemistry & Biology, Nanotechnology Law & Business, The Scientist, Journal of Materials Chemistry, and Journal of Cluster Science, Plasmonics. He is the founding editor of the journal Small, one of the premier international nanotechnology journals, and he has coauthored two bestselling books on nanobiotechnology.

Dr. Mirkin holds a B.S. degree from Dickinson College (1986, elected into Phi Beta Kappa) and a Ph.D. degree in chemistry from the Pennsylvania State University (1989). He was an NSF Postdoctoral Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology prior to becoming a chemistry professor at Northwestern University in 1991.

While Dr. Mirkin is the Director of the International Institute for Nanotechnology, this web page focuses on the research of the Mirkin group within the Department of Chemistry at Northwestern University.