Robert M. Wallace was born in Pittsburgh, PA in 1960. He received the B.S. (1982), the M.S. (1984) and the Ph.D. (1988) in Physics at the University of Pittsburgh. He then was a postdoctoral research associate in Chemistry at the Pittsburgh Surface Science Center.

In 1990, he joined Texas Instruments Central Research Laboratories as a Member of Technical Staff (MTS) in the Materials Characterization Branch of the Materials Science Laboratory, and was elected as a Senior MTS in 1996. Dr. Wallace was then appointed in 1997 to manage the Advanced Technology branch that focused on advanced device concepts and the associated material integration issues.

In May 1999, he joined the faculty at the University of North Texas as a Professor of Materials Science and director of the Laboratory for Electronic Materials and Devices. In 2003, he joined the faculty in the Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science and the School of Naturals Science and Mathematics at the University of Texas at Dallas as a Professor of Electrical Engineering and Physics. He also currently serves as the director of the Cleanroom Research Laboratory.

He has authored or co-authored over 150 publications in peer reviewed journals and proceedings, as well as 70 US and international patents. Among these, he is also a co-inventor of the Hf-based high-k gate dielectric materials to be placed into transistor production in the semiconductor industry for the 45 nm node. A review published in the Journal of Applied Physics on high-k gate dielectrics which he coauthored was recognized by the Semiconductor Research Corporation as one of the most influential research publications in the field with more than 2500 citations to date according to the Scopus database, and was selected in 2006 to be among the 45 top cited publications by the American Institute of Physics over the last 75 years. He was named Fellow of the AVS in 2007 and Fellow of the IEEE in 2009 for his contributions to the field of high-k dielectrics.

He is a member of the Applied Surface Science and the Electronic Materials and Processing divisions in the AVS, and a member of the Materials Research Society and the Electrochemical Society. He is also a Fellow of the IEEE. His interests include materials and integration issues for advanced devices including gate dielectrics, gate electrodes as well as nanoelectronics. Dr. Wallace also consults for semiconductor and nanotechnology companies as well as on intellectual property matters.