He is a chemist and a world-renowned nanoscience expert, who is known for his discovery and development of spherical nucleic acids (SNAs) and SNA-based biodetection and therapeutic schemes, dip-pen nanolithography (DPN) and related cantilever-free nanopatterning and materials discovery methodologies, on-wire lithography (OWL) and co-axial lithography (COAL), and high-area rapid printing (HARP), and contributions to supramolecular chemistry and nanoparticle synthesis.

He has authored over 870 manuscripts and over 1,200 patent applications worldwide (over 430 issued) and founded multiple companies, including Nanosphere, TERA-print, Azul 3D, Flashpoint Therapeutics, and Mattiq. Mirkin has been recognized with over 250 national and international awards, including the King Faisal Prize, IET Faraday Award, Kabiller Prize in Nanoscience and Nanomedicine, SCI Perkin Medal, Wilhelm Exner Medal, RUSNANOPRIZE, Dan David Prize, and Sackler Prize in Convergence Research. He served for eight years on the President’s Council of Advisors on Science & Technology (PCAST), and he is one of very few scientists to be elected to all three US National Academies and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Mirkin has served on the Editorial Advisory Boards of over 30 scholarly journals, and he is the founding editor of the journal Small. At present, he was an Associate Editor of JACS and is a PNAS Editorial Board Member. He has given over 900 invited lectures and educated over 320 graduate students and postdoctoral fellows, of whom over 130 are now faculty members at top institutions around the world.