Chad A. Mirkin is a world-renowned nanoscientist and the Director of the International Institute for Nanotechnology, as well as the George B. Rathmann Professor of Chemistry, Materials Science & Engineering, Biomedical Engineering, Chemical & Biological Engineering, and Medicine at Northwestern University. He earned his B.S. from Dickinson College (1986) and Ph.D. in chemistry from Pennsylvania State University (1989). Mirkin pioneered spherical nucleic acids (SNAs) and invented key nanopatterning techniques like dip-pen nanolithography. With an h-index of 210 (Google Scholar), he has authored over 910 papers, holds over 1,400 patents/patent applications (>450 issued), and founded 10+ companies. He has received >250 awards, including the Lemelson-MIT Prize (2009), Dan David Prize (2016), Perkin Medal (2019), Kavli Prize (2024), and Harvey Prize (2025). He served eight years on PCAST under President Obama and has delivered >900 lectures while mentoring >320 graduate students and postdocs. Among his co-founded companies, notable ones by impact/revenue include Nanosphere (acquired for $83M), Exicure (clinical-stage biotech), and TERA-print (commercial nanopatterning tools).

2026 CME NASA Symposium Abstract – Megalibrary Data Engines for Catalyst Discovery: Learning from Hundreds of Millions of Experiments in a Single Afternoon

Space exploration requires advanced catalytic materials that can convert reactants into fuels, oxygen, and other molecules essential for sustaining life and supporting missions. Catalysts are also central to propellant generation, energy conversion, and processes such as CO₂ hydrogenation, water splitting, and fuel cell reactions. For space applications, in particular, these catalysts must be efficient, durable, and selective under demanding conditions. To accelerate catalyst discovery, we developed a massively parallel scanning probe synthesis tool called polymer pen lithography. This technique generates “megalibraries” containing gradients of millions of unique nanostructures for material discovery purposes. These libraries provide a brute force way of identifying materials that matter but also provide access to extraordinarily large and high-quality data sets that can be used to train machine learning and AI algorithms for materials discovery purposes.

2024 CME NASA Symposium Abstract – Changing the pace of materials discovery through nanomaterial megalibraries.

Creating new materials with specific properties is essential for societal advancement. With countless combinations and the exponential potential at the nanoscale, my team has developed a scanning probe lithography method to create nanomaterial “megalibraries” which contain ~5 billion unique nanomaterials and represent a significant expansion in the range of synthesized materials. By integrating machine learning to guide nanomaterial synthesis for targeted properties, this approach promises to revolutionize material discovery, potentially enhancing technology and medicine, from clean energy to space explorations.

2022 CME NASA Symposium Abstract – Exploring the “Matterverse” with Nanomaterial Megalibraries

The materials we have relied on have evolved over time. Due to the massive parameter space, approaches are needed to rapidly synthesize and screen materials for desired properties. We have developed a scanning probe lithography approach to prepare “megalibraries” of ~5 billion positionally encoded nanomaterials with distinct chemistries. We are developing high-throughput characterization techniques that match the extraordinary pace of synthesis, creating an inflection point in the pace at which we explore the “matterverse”. These approaches produce unprecedentedly large and high-quality data sets that can uniquely inform and educate ML/AI algorithms used to predict novel materials structure/function correlations.