Ambassador Mikulak is currently an expert advisor on chemical and biological weapons issues at the United States Department of State. From November 2010 until his retirement in July 2015, he was the United States Permanent Representative to the OPCW.
Ambassador Mikulak 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 Secretary of State's Award for Excellence in International Security Affairs in 2014 and the Office of the Secretary of Defense Award for Exceptional Civilian Service in 2015. He also received the Hilliard Roderick Prize in Arms Control from the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1992 and an honorary doctorate from Hamline University, St. Paul, Minnesota in 2001.
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.