New NAS Prize To Chad Mirkin

Chad A. Mirkin, George B. Rathmann Professor of Chemistry in the Weinberg College of Arts & Sciences at Northwestern University and founding director of Northwestern’s International Institute for Nanotechnology, is the winner of the inaugural $400,000 Raymond & Beverly Sackler Prize in Convergence Research from the National Academy of Sciences.

Mirkin is being recognized for integrating chemistry, materials science, molecular biology, and biomedicine in the development of spherical nucleic acids that are widely used in the rapid and automated diagnosis of infectious diseases and many other human diseases, including cancers and cardiac disease, and in the detection of drug-resistant bacteria. Two-thirds of the prize money will be awarded to Mirkin, and the remaining third will go to support his research.

The annual prize was established through a generous gift from the Raymond & Beverly Sackler Foundation to recognize significant advances in convergence research—the integration of two or more disciplines.