Robert Erck has 31 years experience at Argonne National Laboratory, where he is currently working as metallurgist in the Experimental Operations and Facilities division.

He has experience in test system/component design for friction and wear and interfacial materials.  Robert Erck is skilled in friction and wear measurement test systems, interference microscopy, PLD, MOCVD, electron beam evaporation, SEM, and high vacuum tribometry.  He has designed or contributed to projects involved test machine design, pulsed laser deposition, flywheel energy storage, ferroelectrics, and superconductors, and friction of cartilage. 

He attended the University of Illinois where he obtained his M.S. degree in physics and his Ph.D. degree in metallurgical engineering.  He is former officer for the Chicago Section of the Society of Tribologists and Lubrication Engineers (STLE), and is the student poster competition chair of STLE.