Bill Hammack is the William H. and Janet G. Lycan Professor in the Department of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He earned a B.S. at Michigan Technological University, and a M.S. and Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign — all in chemical engineering. He taught for a decade at Carnegie-Mellon University before returning to the University of Illinois where he has taught since 1998. From August 2005 to August 2006 he served as a Jefferson Science Fellow at the U.S. Department of State. His work focuses on explaining engineering and technology to the general public. For a decade he broadcast commentaries on public radio, and over the last decade has developed a YouTube channel with over a million subscribers and over seventy million views. His work has been recognized with awards from a diverse group of engineering and science societies, including the “trifecta” of science journalism: the Science in Society Award from the National Association of Science Writers, the Grady-Stack Award from the American Chemical Society, and the Science Writing Award from the American Institute of Physics. And most recently the Council of Scientific Society President’s Carl Sagan Award for the Public Appreciation of Science, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers’ Ralph Coats Roe Medal, and the Hoover Medal, awarded by a collection of engineering societies.