Faculty Directory

MG Finn, PhD

MG Finn, PhD headshot

Professor School of Chemistry and Biochemistry, School of Biological Sciences
Georgia Institute of Technology

Chief Scientific Officer, Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta Pediatric Technology Center
James A. Carlos Family Chair for Pediatric Technology

EMAIL: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
PHONE: 404-385-0906
Visit Website

OFFICE:
Molecular Science and Engineering (MoSE) Building
Room 2100M
901 AtlanticDrive
Atlanta, GA, 30332-0400

Biography

M.G. Finn is Professor in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry and the School of Biological Sciences at Georgia Tech. He started his independenet career on the faculty of the University of Virginia in 1988, where his group studied and developed a variety of transition metal-mediated synthetic methods. Prof. Finn moved to the Department of Chemistry and The Skaggs Institute for Chemical Biology at The Scripps Research Institute in 1998, and then to Georgia Tech in 2013. He assumed the chairmanship of the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry in 2014, and the role of Chief Scientific Officer of the Pediatric Technology Center in 2017. He holds the James A. Carlos Family Chair for Pediatric Technology.

Research

Prof. Finn’s current interests include the use of virus-like particles as molecular and catalytic building blocks for vaccine and functional materials development, the discovery of click reactions for organic and materials synthesis, polyvalent interactions and advanced linker technologies in drug targeting, and the use of evolution for the discovery of chemical function. The Finn group’s efforts in vaccine development focus on anti-glycan and anti-peptide immune response, lymph node targeting, adjuvant delivery, and bacterial and trypanosomal pathogens.

Graduates from the Finn laboratory can be found in academic departments around the world, as well as in companies in the pharmaceutical, biotechnology, chemical, and materials industries. Prof. Finn was the first recipient of the annual Scripps Outstanding Mentor Award, a 2017 Arthur C. Cope Scholar award, and was Editor-in-Chief of the journal ACS Combinatorial Science from 2010 to 2020.

Education

  • NIH Postdoctoral Fellowship, Stanford University, 1986-1988
  • Ph.D. in Inorganic Chemistry, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1986
  • B.S. in Chemistry, California Institute of Technology, 1980

Research Center(s)