STEM / Author

Dr. Robert E. Hampson is a Neuroscientist and author.  By day, he is a professor at Wake Forest School of Medicine, studying how our brains encode memory.  By night, he writes military, adventure and hard-science Science Fiction as well as nonfiction articles explaining science to the general public.

Robert Hampson's 2023 breakout novel The Moon and the Desert, builds on his scientific background to update the 1970’s classic TV program The Six Million Dollar Man.  His SF writing career began with "They Also Serve," a short story in Riding the Red Horse, published in 2015.  That story became the foundation of his first solo novel The Human Side, in 2020.  He has three collaborative novels with Sandra Medlock, Chris Kennedy and Casey Moores in the "Wrogul's Oath" arc of the popular Four Horsemen Universe, and a forthcoming novel The Moon and the Desert an updated retelling of The Six Million Dollar Man.  In addition to these five novels, he has co-edited two anthologies, and published more than 25 works of short fiction (some written as “Tedd Roberts”).  He is also a regular contributor of nonfiction articles for science fiction readers, with more than 15 articles published.  One of the articles, "Why Science is Never Settled," was nominated for the Hugo Award in 2015 as Best Related Work. Hampson has sequels in the works to both solo novels, the Wrogul's Oath, and The Founder Effect anthology.

Dr. Hampson's forty-year scientific career has ranged from studying the effects of commonly abused drugs on memory, to the effects of space radiation on the brain.  His current work, as lead scientist for Braingrade, Inc., is developing a medical device to restore human memory function damaged by injury or disease.   He is also a professor of physiology/pharmacology and neurology at Wake Forest School of Medicine where he teaches regularly in the neuroscience and biomedical graduate curriculum.  He also developed and teaches a course on Communicating Science, in which young scientists practice writing for—and speaking to—the general public.  He is a scientific journal editor; a reviewer for dozens of journals and research agencies; has been interviewed on his research by newspapers, radio and TV; a consultant to TV and game producers, defense contractors, and authors.  He has published more than 175 peer-reviewed scientific articles. Hampson has worked as a newspaper carrier, greeting card merchandizer, computer data entry operator and programmer, and laboratory technician, and lived in Pennsylvania, Texas and North Carolina.  He now lives in the Piedmont of North Carolina with his wife, Ruann. 

Robert E. Hampson is available as a consultant through SIGMA – the Science Fiction Think Tank and the Science and Entertainment Exchange (a service of the National Academy of Sciences). His website is http://REHampson.com.