Charles Wampler

Huisking Foundation, Inc. Collegiate Research Professor

Numerical Algebraic Geometry, Robot and Mechanism Kinematics, Scientific Computing

Ph.D., Stanford University, 1985
M.S., Stanford University, 1980
B.S., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1979

Dr. Wampler is an applied mathematician and mechanical engineer who joined the ACMS faculty in 2023 with a joint appointment in the Department of Aerospace & Mechanical Engineering. Before joining Notre Dame, he worked 37 years at General Motors Research and Development primarily on robotics for automotive manufacturing and modeling of batteries for electric vehicles. With Andrew Sommese, now emeritus professor of ACMS, he published “Numerical Algebraic Geometry,” the seminal paper of the field, which concerns algorithms for solving systems of nonlinear equations. He was also a senior member of the NASA/GM team that designed and built Robonaut 2, which launched to the International Space Station in 2011. Wampler has been a member of the National Academy of Engineering since 2020, and he is a fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), and the Society of Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM).