Mark C. Hersam is currently a Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, Chemistry, and Medicine at Northwestern University. He e arned a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) in 1996, M.Phil. in Physics from the University of Cambridge in 1997, and a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from UIUC in 2000. In 1999, he also performed research at the IBM T. J. Watson Research Laboratory under the support of an IBM Distinguished Fellowship. His research interests include nanofabrication, scanning p robe microscopy, semiconductor surfaces, and carbon nanomaterials . As a faculty member, Dr. Hersam has received several awards including the Beckman Young Investigator Award , NSF CAREER Award, ARO Young Investigator Award, ONR Young Investigator Award, Sloan Research Fellow ship, Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, TMS Robert Lansing Hardy Award, AVS Peter Mark Award, ECS SES Research Young Investigator Award, MRS Outstanding Young Investigator Award, and five Teacher of the Year Awards. In recognition of his early career accomplishments, Dr. Hersam was directly promoted fro m assistant professor to full professor with tenure in 2006. In 2007, Dr. Hersam co-founded NanoIntegris, which is a start-up company focused on supplying high performance carbon nanomaterials. Dr. Hersam is a Fellow of MRS and SPIE in addition to serving as the Chair of the AVS Nanometer-scale Science and Technology Division and as Associate Editor of ACS Nano.