Rate My Professor Chad Mirkin

Northwestern University

Chemistry Engineering Medicine Nanotechnology Nanochemistry Materials Chemistry Biomedical Engineering Materials Engineering Chemical Engineering Biomedicine

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5.04/23/2026

Always fair, encouraging, and motivating.

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About Chad

Chad A. Mirkin is the George B. Rathmann Professor of Chemistry, Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering, Biomedical Engineering, Materials Science & Engineering, and Medicine, and Director of the International Institute for Nanotechnology at Northwestern University. In the field of Chemistry, he is renowned for pioneering discoveries in nanoscience and nanotechnology. Mirkin earned his B.S. in Chemistry from Dickinson College in 1986 and his Ph.D. in Chemistry from Penn State University in 1989. He completed an NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship at MIT before joining the Northwestern University faculty in 1991, where he has held his current positions and founded multiple nanotechnology companies.

The research in Mirkin's group centers on developing methods for controlling the architecture of molecules and materials on the 1–100 nm length scale and understanding their properties for applications in chemical and biological sensing, gene regulation and editing, immunotherapy, lithography, catalysis, optics, and clean energy generation, storage, and conversion. Key innovations include the invention of spherical nucleic acids (SNAs) establishing the field of structural nanomedicine, nanoparticle-DNA conjugates that treat nanoparticles as 'atoms' and DNA as programmable 'bonds' for colloidal crystal engineering, dip-pen nanolithography (DPN), nanoparticle megalibraries and nanocombinatorial chemistry for materials discovery, on-wire lithography (OWL), and co-axial lithography (COAL). He has authored over 930 peer-reviewed manuscripts and filed over 1,420 patent applications worldwide, with more than 450 issued. Seminal publications include "A DNA-based method for rationally assembling nanoparticles into macroscopic materials," "Nanostructures in biodiagnostics," "Selective colorimetric detection of polynucleotides based on the distance-dependent optical properties of gold nanoparticles," "'Dip-pen' nanolithography," and "Photoinduced conversion of silver nanospheres to nanoprisms." Mirkin's contributions have garnered over 250 national and international awards, such as the 2024 Kavli Prize in Nanoscience, 2023–2024 Harvey Prize in Science and Technology, 2023 King Faisal Prize, 2026 ACS Award in the Chemistry of Materials, 2025 Nadrian C. Seeman Nanoscience Prize, election to the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, and National Academy of Medicine, the 2009 Lemelson-MIT Prize, and service for eight years on the President’s Council of Advisors on Science & Technology. He has delivered over 1,000 invited lectures worldwide and mentored over 360 graduate students and postdoctoral fellows, more than 150 of whom are now faculty members at leading institutions.