About Bill

Bill Hammack focuses on explaining engineering and technology to the general public using mass media. He is the first engineering professor to be tenured and promoted to full professor for this kind of outreach work His goal is to enhance "engineering awareness" by adding a human face to the engineering enterprise.

His radio commentaries appear regularly on American Public Media's premier business program Marketplace, and he has appeared often in Australia on Robyn Williams' Science Show produced by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Bill has now created over 300 pieces for public radio drawing strongly on his background as a chemical engineer. He's talked about the polymers used in soft contact lenses, the importance of glass in our lives, the "thermal chemical convective motion of strongly temperature and depth dependent viscosity liquids" of the Lava Lamp, how nylon revolutionized our lives, tupperware and thermosetting plastics, and of the incredible chemical metallurgy of the latest razor.

He served (August 2005 to August 2006) as a Diplomat at the U.S. Department of State. He worked as a science advisor at the Korean Desk, working in part on the Six-Party Talks to denuclearize North Korea, and as a member of the Bureau of International Security and Non-proliferation working to secure highly-enriched nuclear material around the world.

He is currently a Professor of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His course there, The Hidden World of Engineering, is taught every semester to a diverse mix of students majoring in commerce, architecture, photography, history, and graphic arts. This popular course gives students an appreciation for engineering and for how engineers think. It is taught in a unique way that lets the students work in teams and actually do engineering.

For his radio work Bill has been recognized by awards from many journalistic, science and engineering societies. He has won the National Association of Science Writers' Science-in-Society Award, the American Institute of Physics Science Writing Award, the American Chemical Society's Grady-Stack Medal, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers' Church Medal, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers' (IEEE) Award for Distinguished Literary Contributions Furthering the Public Understanding of Engineering, the American Institute of Chemical Engineers' Service to Society Award, the American Society of Engineering Education's President's Award, and the National Federation of Community Broadcasters' Silver Reel for National News and Commentary.

You can view Bill's Vita in pdf: one page form or full vita.