Armstrong received a Bachelor of Chemical Engineering degree from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 1970 and a PhD in chemical engineering from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1973. He joined the MIT faculty in 1973, and he served as head of the Department of
Chemical Engineering from 1996 to 2007. From 2013 to 2023, Armstrong served as director of the
MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI), after having been the organization's initial deputy director from its founding in 2007. Armstrong's research has focused on polymer fluid mechanics and the rheology of complex materials. ==Honors==