Thomas "Tom" McCarthy was born in Pittsfield, Massachusetts on February 20, 1956. His father, James (Jim), was a draftsman and later a manager at the General Electric Company. His mother, Helen, was a nurse and later a high school English teacher.
Tom was educated in the Pittsfield public school system and graduated from Pittsfield High School and Pittsfield Community Music School in 1974. He studied Chemistry at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst (UMass Amherst), earning the Bachelor of Surgery in 1978, and Organic Chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, earning the Doctor of Philosophy in 1982.
His undergraduate and graduate advisors were C. Peter Lillya and George M. Whitesides. He has been a faculty member in the Polymer Science and Engineering Department at UMass Amherst since 1982 and was promoted to Associate Professor in 1986 and Professor in 1991. He served as Department Head from 2000-2003.
Since 2006 he has been a Guest Professor at Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry and has taught there each semester since 2005.
Molly Shoichet
Jim Watkins
Xinqiao Jia
R. Dhamodaran
Margarita Herrera-Alonso
Wei Chen
Jeff Youngblood
Zhaohui Su
Padma Rajagopalan
Voravee Hoven
Alex Fadeev
Katrina Viviano
Yasuhiko Iwasaki
Ilke Anac.
