Charles Wampler

Dr. Charles Wampler is the Huisking Foundation, Inc. Collegiate Research Professor at the University of Notre Dame, holding a joint appointment in the Department of Applied and Computational Mathematics and Statistics (ACMS) and the Department of Aerospace & Mechanical Engineering. He joined the ACMS faculty in 2023 after a 37-year tenure at General Motors Research and Development, where he focused on robotics for automotive manufacturing and battery modeling for electric vehicles. Wampler earned his Ph.D. (1985), M.S. (1980), and B.S. (1979) from Stanford University and MIT, respectively.

His research interests include numerical algebraic geometry, robot and mechanism kinematics, and scientific computing. He co-authored the seminal paper Numerical Algebraic Geometry with Andrew Sommese, establishing foundational algorithms for solving nonlinear equations. Wampler also contributed to the NASA/GM team that developed Robonaut 2, a humanoid robot deployed on the International Space Station in 2011.

His work spans interdisciplinary fields, combining mathematics, robotics, and battery technology. Recent publications emphasize battery state estimation, numerical methods for algebraic systems, and robotics kinematics. Wampler’s contributions have been recognized through his membership in the National Academy of Engineering (since 2020) and fellowships from ASME, IEEE, and SIAM.

Wampler’s career bridges academia and industry, with patents in robotics and battery systems. He collaborates on software tools like Bertini for numerical algebraic geometry and has advised on projects ranging from robotic control to energy storage optimization.