Chad Mairn is an Information Services Librarian, Assistant Professor, and  founder of the Innovation Lab at St. Petersburg College. While an undergraduate studying Humanities at the University of South Florida (USF), Chad was awarded a Library of Congress Fellowship helping archive personal papers and other items in the Leonard Bernstein Collection. During his Library and Information Science graduate work, also at USF, Chad became a technology liaison between the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Florida public libraries.

In October 2015, the Innovation Lab received a $7,500 Curiosity Creates grant from the Walt Disney Company in collaboration with ALA’s Association for Library Service to Children to expand their successful Maker Boot Camp series that helps “promote exploration and discovery for children ages 6 to 14.” Imagination and originality, flexibility, decision-making, communication and self-expression, collaboration, and motivation are the critical components of creativity that the Maker Boot Camp has integrated into their curriculum. Here is the Maker Boot Camp documentary film.

Much of Chad's recent interests have focused around mobile and emerging technologies; he has written a couple of book chapters and numerous articles on technologies impacting society. In 2016, Chad was awarded the League of Innovation Excellence Award in Teaching and Learning for Innovation in the Use of Technology.