Nanotechnology Research Directions for Societal Needs in 2020

Dickinson College (B.S., 1986) and his graduate training at the Pennsylvania State University where he completed his Ph.D. in chemistry in 1989. That same year he moved to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow. Mirkin joined the faculty at Northwestern University in 1991 as an Assistant Professor in Chemistry. In 1997 he was named Charles E. and Emma H. Morrison Professor of Chemistry. His current positions are the George B. Rathmann Professor of Chemistry, Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, Professor of Medicine, and Director of the NU International Institute for Nanotechnology (IIN). Mirkin has won numerous awards for his research in these areas, including: the NIH Director¿s Pioneer Award, the Collegiate Inventors Award from the National Inventors Hall of Fame (2003, 2004), the ACS Nobel Signature Award, the Raymond and Beverly Sackler Prize in the Physical Sciences, the Feynman Prize, the Leo Hendrik Baekeland Award, Crain¿s Chicago 40 under 40 Award, the ACS Award in Pure Chemistry, the Discover 2000 Innovation of the Year Award, the Materials Research Society¿s Outstanding Young Investigator Award, the E. Bright Wilson Prize, the Phi Lambda Upsilon Fresenius Award, a Beckman Young Investigator Award, a NSF Young Investigator Award, an A. P. Sloan Foundation Fellowship, an ONR Young Investigator Award, a DuPont New Professor Award, and a Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award. Recently, he was elected as a fellow of the AAAS. In 1997, he was corecipient of a prestigious BF Goodrich Collegiate Inventors Award for one of the three most outstanding collegiate inventions in all of medicine, science, and engineering. He holds an honorary doctorate from Dickinson College, and was elected to the school¿s Board of Trustees in 2005. Professor Mirkin is the author or coauthor of over 280 publications and 313 patents (55 issued). He serves on the editorial advisory board of 19 scholarly journals, and is an active consultant with several major chemical companies. In addition, he is a founder of two companies, Nanosphere and NanoInk, and cofounder of the journal, Small. Dr. Mark C. Hersam is currently a Professor of Materials Science and Engineering and a Professor of Chemistry at Northwestern University. He earned a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) in 1996, M.Phil. in Physics from the University of Cambridge in 1997, and a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from UIUC in 2000. In 1999, he also performed research at the IBM T. J. Watson Research Laboratory under the support of an IBM Distinguished Fellowship. His research interests include single molecule chemistry, nanofabrication, scanning probe microscopy, semiconductor surfaces, and carbon nanomaterials. As a faculty member, Dr. Hersam has received several awards including the Beckman Young Investigator Award, NSF CAREER Award, ARO Young Investigator Award, ONR Young Investigator Award, Sloan Research Fellowship, Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, TMS Robert Lansing Hardy Award, AVS Peter Mark Award, ECS SES Research Young Investigator Award, MRS Outstanding Young Investigator Award, and four Teacher of the Year Awards. In recognition of his early career accomplishments, Dr. Hersam was directly promoted from assistant professor to full professor with tenure in 2006. In 2007, Dr. Hersam co-founded NanoIntegris, which is a start-up company focused on supplying high performance carbon nanomaterials.