McLaughlin became the 14th president of The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art on July 1, 2025 after serving for five years as Georgia Tech’s provost and executive vice president for Academic Affairs. He was appointed provost after serving as dean from 2017 to 2020.

He first joined Tech as a member of the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering faculty in 1996. McLaughlin was the Steve Chaddick School Chair in ECE from 2012 to 2017, and the vice provost for International Initiatives and Steven A. Denning Chair in Global Engagement from 2007 to 2012.

In 2014, he co-founded CREATE-X, a campus-wide effort to instill entrepreneurial confidence in students and help them launch companies.

McLaughlin’s research interests are in the general area of communications and information theory. His research group has published in the areas of forward error correction and equalization in wireless communications, magnetic/optical data storage, data security, and privacy