Charles M. Lieber was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1959. He attended Franklin and Marshall College for his undergraduate education and graduated with honors in Chemistry. After doctoral studies at Stanford University and postdoctoral research at the California Institute of Technology, he moved to the East Coast in 1987 to assume a position of Assistant Professor at Columbia University.

Here Lieber embarked upon a new research program addressing the synthesis and properties of low-dimensional materials. He moved to Harvard University in 1991 and now holds a joint appointment in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, as the Mark Hyman Professor of Chemistry, and the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

At Harvard, Lieber has pioneered the synthesis of a broad range of nanoscale materials, the characterization of the unique physical properties of these materials and the development of methods of hierarchical assembly of nanoscale wires, together with the demonstration of applications of these materials in nanoelectronics, nanocomputing, biological and chemical sensing, neurobiology and nanophotonics. Lieber has also developed and applied a new chemically sensitive microscopy for probing organic and biological materials at nanometer to molecular scales.

His work has been recognized by a number of awards, including the MRS Fred Kavli Distinguished Lectureship in Nanoscience (2010), Inorganic Nanoscience Award, ACS Division of Inorganic Chemistry (2009), Einstein Award, Chinese Academy of Sciences (2008); NBIC Research Excellence Award, University of Pennsylvania (2007); Nanotech Briefs Nano 50 Award (2005); ACS Award in the Chemistry of Materials (2004); World Technology Award in Materials (2004 and 2003); Scientific American 50 Award in Nanotechnology and Molecular Electronics (2003); New York Intellectual Property Law Association Inventor of the Year (2003); APS McGroddy Prize for New Materials (2003); Harrison Howe Award, University of Rochester (2002); MRS Medal (2002); Feynman Prize in Nanotechnology (2001); NSF Creativity Award (1996) and ACS Award in Pure Chemistry (1992).

Lieber is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Fellow of the Materials Research Society, Fellow of the American Chemical Society (Inaugural Class), Honorary Fellow of the Chinese Chemical Society, and member of the American Physical Society, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, International Society for Optical Engineering and American Association for the Advancement of Science. Lieber is Co-Editor of Nano Letters, and serves on the editorial and advisory boards of a large number of science and technology journals.

Lieber has published over 320 papers in peer-reviewed journals and is the principal inventor on more than 35 patents. Based on his citation impact scores, Lieber has been ranked #1 in Chemistry for the decade 2000-2010 by Thomson Reuters. In his spare time, Lieber has been active in commercializing nanotechnology, and has founded the nanotechnology company Nanosys, Inc. (2001) and the new nanosensor company Vista Therapeutics (2007).