Milan Mrksich

Milan Mrksich (born 15 August 1968) is an American chemist. He is the Henry Wade Rogers Professor at Northwestern University with appointments in chemistry, biomedical engineering and cell & developmental biology.^[1] He also served as both the founding director of the Center for Synthetic Biology and as an associate director of the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center at Northwestern.^[2][3] Mrksich also served as the Vice President for Research of Northwestern University.^[4]

His research involves the chemistry and synthesis of surfaces that contact biological environments. His laboratory has pioneered several technologies, including strategies to integrate living cells with microelectronic devices, methods to enable high throughput assays for drug discovery, and approaches to making synthetic fusion proteins for applications as therapeutics. Most notably, he developed the SAMDI-MS biochip technology that allows for high-throughput quantification of surface-based biochemical assays using MALDI mass spectrometry. Through SAMDI-MS, Mrksich has become a leader in using label-free technology for drug discovery, founding the company SAMDI Tech in 2011 that primarily serves global pharmaceutical companies.^[5] His work has been described in over 240 publications (h-index 98), 500 invited talks, and 18 patents.^[6]