Hammack video earns grand prize at SA's Online Film Fest

Bill Hammack’s playful video showing how a photocopier works won the grand prize in Scientific American’s Inaugural Science Online Film Festival.

In the award-winning video, Hammack, known by millions as The Engineer Guy, drags the copier through hallways, a tunnel, and an elevator before he takes it apart and explains how it works.

A professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering, Hammack has focused much of his energies on making science and technology accessible to a general audience. Recently, Scientific American also  ran a feature and Q & A about Hammack and his videos. The article describes how Hammack’s video and radio pieces explore the technological world by emphasizing the human dimension to technology, “from the trial, tribulations, and triumphs of inventors and scientists to the effect of technology on our daily lives.”

Through his more than 300 radio programs and several videos series, Hammack has revealed the secrets of high-tech underwear, explored the mysteries of mood rings, probed the perils of nanotechnology, and examined the threats to privacy from technology. In fall 2010, Hammack shared his communications insights through a new book, Why Engineers Need to Grow a Long Tail: A primer on using new media to inform the public and to create the next generation of innovative engineers.

A member of the Illinois faculty for more than 20 years, Hammack spent 2005-06 as a U.S. Diplomat working as a Senior Science Adviser at the Department of State. He's received the top awards in science journalism including the National Association of Science Writers Science in Society Award, the American Institute of Physics Science Writing Award, and the American Chemical Society's Grady-Stack Medal.
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Contact: Bill Hammack, Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, 217/244-4146.

Writer: Greta Weiderman, assistant director of communications, Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, 217/333-2612.

If you have any questions about the College of Engineering, or other story ideas, contact Rick Kubetz, writer/editor, Engineering Communications Office, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; 217/244-7716.