Robin McCarley elected fellow of the National Academy of Inventors

Robin McCarley has been named a fellow of the National Academy of Inventors (NAI).

The executive director of the Fralin Life Sciences Institute and a professor in the Department of Chemistry, McCarley joins an elite group of seven current Virginia Tech NAI fellows, including Virginia Tech President Tim Sands and Eric Burger, Commonwealth Cyber Initiative research director who’s also a 2023 NAI fellow.

“Dr. McCarley’s dedication to advancing society is evident in his focus on life-changing discoveries, including the first investigative procedure for HIV,” said Virginia Tech President Tim Sands, who earned the NAI fellow distinction in 2012. “We are incredibly fortunate to have his leadership and vision guiding an institute dedicated to innovative environmental and life sciences research, education, and engagement.”

McCarley will be recognized at the induction ceremony during the annual conference of the National Academy of Inventors in Raleigh, North Carolina on June 16-18, 2024.

“It is an incredible honor to receive recognition for how our research efforts over the last 20 years have positively influenced society,” said McCarley. “I am extremely grateful to those with whom I worked over the years, and I am fortunate to be included in the august group of NAI fellows at Virginia Tech.”

The National Academy of Inventors was founded in 2010 “to recognize and encourage inventors with patents issued from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, enhance the visibility of academic technology and innovation, encourage the disclosure of intellectual property, educate and mentor innovative students, and translate the inventions of its members to benefit society."

Currently, there are over 4,600 individual NAI members, including fellows, senior members, and chapter members, affiliated with more than 300 institutions worldwide, according to the NAI website.

During his career, McCarley has received more than $20 million in external research and educational funding from the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, and the Dreyfus Foundation. He holds seven U.S. patents, five foreign patents, and has published over 100 scientific peer-reviewed articles that have been cited more than 7,500 times (H-index of 51) - the result of efforts from the 13 postdoctoral fellows and 43 Ph.D., five masters, and 33 undergraduate students he has mentored.

One of McCarley’s most notable achievements has been his groundbreaking work facilitating nanosensor arrays and DNA sequencing sequencing for analysis of isolated circulating tumor cells. The technologies he developed for using time-of-flight transduction and polymer-based microfluidic platforms to this end have been licensed by Roche Healthcare and the medical diagnostics company BioFluidica.

“This recognition is a testament to Dr. McCarley’s unwavering pursuit for advancing scientific knowledge for the greater good,” said Dan Sui, Virginia Tech senior vice president for research and innovation. “His passion began as an undergraduate student where he helped Abbott Laboratories develop the first immunoassay for HIV.”

Throughout his career, McCarley also served in numerous external professional roles, including consulting for the American Association for the Advancement of Science and proposal reviewer for the  U.S. Department of Energy, National Research Council, Israeli National Science Foundation, and the American Chemical Society Petroleum Research Fund, among others. His broad scientific knowledge and expertise with proposal review led to his four-year appointment as a program director at the National Science Foundation.

He most recently served as the Barbara Womack Alumni Association Endowed Professor of Chemistry at Louisiana State University, where he led the McCarley Research Group focusing on the chemistry of stimuli-responsive molecular systems, both in solution and on surfaces and within living mammalian cells. 

McCarley received his Ph.D. in analytical chemistry from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill after earning a bachelor's degree in chemistry from Lake Forest College in Illinois. Prior to joining Louisiana State University in 1992, McCarley was with the University of Texas at Austin as a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow.

At Virginia Tech, researchers can partner with the university’s LICENSE and LAUNCH offices to create paths to market for research and technologies with the potential for significant societal and economic impact.

More about the NAI 2023 class 

According to the NAI, the 2023 fellow class hails from 118 research universities and governmental and non-profit research institutions worldwide. This class includes 89 individuals from the Association of American Universities institutions and 128 individuals from R1 universities, which have  very high research activity. Collectively, the 2023 Fellows hold more than 4,600 issued U.S. patents.