Robert Mikulak
Independent Expert, U.S. Department of State - retired
Ambassador (ret) Robert P. Mikulak is an independent expert on chemical and biological security issues. Until mid-December 2025, he served as an expert on these issues at the United States Department of State, focusing on measures for strengthening the Biological Weapons Convention, ensuring that advances in biology are not used to create new biological weapons, and investigation of alleged use of chemical or biological weapons. He is also an expert consultant for the UN Office of Disarmament Affairs.
From November 2010 until his retirement in July 2015, Ambassador Mikulak was the United States Permanent Representative to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). He previously served in the State Department and the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency in a series of increasingly responsible technical and policy positions related to prohibition of chemical and biological weapons. During the decade-long negotiation of the 1992 Chemical Weapons Convention, he was the deputy U.S. negotiator and senior U.S. expert.
Ambassador Mikulak was awarded the OPCW-The Hague Award in 2019 for outstanding contributions toward a world free of chemical weapons. Other honors include high-level awards from the Secretaries of State and Defense and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Ambassador Mikulak received his undergraduate degree in chemistry at Hamline University in St. Paul, Minnesota and his Ph.D. in organic chemistry from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He did post-doctoral research at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen, Germany and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.