Robert Hamers

Position
University

Robert Hamers is the Steenbock Professor of chemistry at the University of Wisconsin Madison and the co-lead of the ACS/UW-Madison Bridge to the Chemistry Directorate Program. As a first-generation college graduate, Hamers has been an advocate for students from underserved racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic populations for more than 30 years. During his tenure as Department Chair 2007-2010, he led efforts to expand departmental policies to provide financial support for graduate students who choose parenthood during graduate school, and he participated in writing the department’s first written plans to broaden participation. As Director of the NSF Center for Sustainable Nanotechnology since 2012, he is responsible for research and broader impact activities spanning 14 institutions, including overseeing and advocating for center-wide plans to Broad Participation. As a member of the UW-Madison Chemistry Department’s Diversity Committee in 2018, he co-led departmental efforts to develop and implement the ACS/UW-Madison Bridge to the Chemistry Doctorate Program, which provides a 21-month Research M.S. degree for students from under-represented groups. In that role he helped develop and implement holistic review processes and criteria that have been successfully used for the Bridge program and have more recently been expanded to department-wide admissions processes.