Robert C. Armstrong

Robert C. Armstrong is the Chevron Professor of Chemical Engineering, Emeritus and Professor of Chemical Engineering Post Tenure at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was a full-time member of the MIT faculty from 1973–2023. Armstrong was the longest-serving director of the MIT Energy Initiative, an Institute-wide effort at MIT linking science, technology, and policy to transform the world’s energy systems. He served as director of MITEI from 2013 to 2023, after serving as the organization’s deputy director from 2007-2013 with founding director Ernest Moniz. Armstrong served as head of the Department of Chemical Engineering from 1996 to 2007. His research is focused on energy systems, meeting global energy needs, and pathways to a low-carbon energy future.

Armstrong has been elected into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2020) and the National Academy of Engineering (2008). He received the 2006 Bingham Medal from the Society of Rheology, which is devoted to the study of the science of deformation and flow of matter, and the Founders Award (2020), Warren K. Lewis Award (2006), and the Professional Progress Award (1992) from the American Institute of Chemical Engineers.

Armstrong chaired MIT’s 2022 The Future of Energy Storage study and was a member of MIT’s The Future of Natural Gas and The Future of Solar Energy study groups. He was also chair of the 2024 MITEI report on The Role of Fusion Energy in a Decarbonized Electricity System, done in collaboration with the MIT Plasma Science and Fusion Center. He advised the teams that developed MITEI’s recent reports, The Future of Nuclear Energy in a Carbon-Constrained World (2018) and Insights into Future Mobility (2019). He co-edited Game Changers: Energy on the Move with former U.S. Secretary of State George P. Shultz.