John A. McLean is Stevenson Professor of Chemistry, Director of the Center for Innovative Technology, and Deputy Director of the Institute for Integrative Biosystems Research and Education at Vanderbilt University. Prof. McLean completed his PhD at George Washington University in 2001 under the direction of Prof. Akbar Montaser, performed postdoctoral research at Forschungszentrum Jülich in Germany, and then was a postdoctoral at Texas A&M University with Prof. David H. Russell in biological mass spectrometry. McLean and colleagues focus on the conceptualization, design, and construction of structural mass spectrometers, specifically targeting complex samples in systems, synthetic, and chemical biology.

Prof. McLean has received a number of awards, including the Waters Center of Innovation, Agilent Thought Leader Award, Excellence in Teaching Award from the student members of the American Chemical Society, a Defense Threat Reduction Agency Research Award, an American Society for Mass Spectrometry Research Award, a Spectroscopy Society of Pittsburgh Award, an R&D 100 Award, and the Bunsen–Kirchhoff Prize from the GDCh (German Chemical Society), among others. He has published over 175 manuscripts, book chapters, and patents and serves as an Associate Editor for Nature Molecular Phenomics and on the Editorial Boards of several leading scientific journals.