Michael Williams
EducationCarnegie Mellon University
Saint Vincent College
Scientific career
FieldsParticle physics
Machine Learning
InstitutionsMassachusetts Institute of Technology
Imperial College London
ThesisMeasurement of the differential cross section and spin density matrix elements along with a partial wave analysis for gamma p to omega p using CLAS at Jefferson Lab
Doctoral advisorCurtis Meyer

Michael Williams is an experimental particle physicist, faculty member at MIT, and inaugural Deputy Director of the NSF AI Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Fundamental Interactions (IAIFI).

Biography

Williams grew up in suburban Pittsburgh, a city he remained in for his undergraduate and graduate studies.[1] Initially unsure of what he wanted to study or pursue as a career,[2] Williams double-majored in physics and mathematics summa cum laude at Saint Vincent College in 2001 before earning his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees at Carnegie Mellon University under the supervision of Curtis Meyer in 2007.[3][4] He worked as a postdoctoral fellow at Imperial College London from 2008 until his appointment as a professor in the Laboratory for Nuclear Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2012.[5][6] A tenured professor in the MIT Department of Physics, Williams is also an affiliate member of the MIT Statistics and Data Science Center and the MIT Institute for Data, Systems, and Society.[7][8]

Through his experimental particle physics research, Williams primarily focuses on "searching for as-yet-unknown particles and forces, possibly components of the dark sector of matter, and on studying largely unexplored emergent properties of QCD."[1] Williams leads the MIT group working on the LHCb experiment,[9][10][11][12][13] a detector at CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC) named for its focus on the bottom quark. He also works on the GlueX experiment at Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (JLab), which studies a class of particles called mesons. Notably, Williams is also the inaugural deputy director of IAIFI, a new National Science Foundation AI Institute given $20 million in initial funding, and works on the development and use of AI tools for furthering accelerator physics research.[14][15][16]

In connection with his work on IAIFI, Williams and colleague Jesse Thaler also created and co-chair a new degree program at MIT, an interdisciplinary PhD in physics, statistics, and data science.[17][18]

Honors

  • Early Career Award, US Department of Energy (2013)[19]
  • Jefferson Laboratory Thesis Prize (2008)[20]
  • Guy C. Berry Graduate Research Award, Carnegie Mellon University (2006)[21]

References

  1. 1 2 "Michael Williams » MIT Physics". MIT Physics. Retrieved 2021-03-12.
  2. ↑ "Michael Williams". The Council of Independent Colleges. Retrieved 2021-03-12.
  3. ↑ "Physics Tree - Mike Williams". academictree.org. Retrieved 2021-03-12.
  4. ↑ "Former Graduate Students in Medium Energy Physics". www-meg.phys.cmu.edu. Retrieved 2021-03-12.
  5. ↑ "Meet the 2019 tenured professors in the School of Science". MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 10 July 2019. Retrieved 2021-03-12.
  6. ↑ "INSPIRE". inspirehep.net. Retrieved 2021-03-12.
  7. ↑ "People | Michael Williams". MIT Statistics and Data Science Center. Retrieved 2021-03-12.
  8. ↑ "Michael Williams". IDSS. Retrieved 2021-03-12.
  9. ↑ Charley, Sarah (13 February 2015). "What's new for LHC Run II". symmetry magazine. Retrieved 2021-03-12.
  10. ↑ "Scientists Are Hunting for the 'Dark Photon'—a Portal to the Dark Universe". Gizmodo. 9 February 2018. Retrieved 2021-03-12.
  11. ↑ Charley, Sarah (3 September 2014). "Watching 'the clock' at the LHC". symmetry magazine. Retrieved 2021-03-12.
  12. ↑ February 2015, Jesse Emspak 18 (18 February 2015). "World's Largest Atom Smasher Returns: 4 Things It Could Find". livescience.com. Retrieved 2021-03-12.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  13. ↑ "Hannah Diehl and Bryce Hwang named 2017-18 Goldwater Scholars". MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 6 April 2017. Retrieved 2021-03-12.
  14. ↑ Gnida, Manuel (August 2018). "Machine learning proliferates in particle physics". symmetry magazine. Retrieved 2021-03-12.
  15. ↑ Science, Laboratory for Nuclear; MIT (2020-08-30). "NSF Announces MIT-Led Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Fundamental Interactions". SciTechDaily. Retrieved 2021-03-12.
  16. ↑ Overbye, Dennis (2020-11-23). "Can a Computer Devise a Theory of Everything?". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2021-03-12.
  17. ↑ "National Science Foundation announces MIT-led Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Fundamental Interactions". MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 26 August 2020. Retrieved 2021-03-12.
  18. ↑ "PhD in Physics, Statistics, and Data Science » MIT Physics". MIT Physics. Retrieved 2021-03-12.
  19. ↑ "Five from MIT win Early Career Awards". MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 8 May 2013. Retrieved 2021-03-12.
  20. ↑ "Awards | Jefferson Lab". www.jlab.org. Retrieved 2021-03-12.
  21. ↑ University, Carnegie Mellon. "The Guy C. Berry Graduate Research Award - Mellon College of Science - Carnegie Mellon University". www.cmu.edu. Retrieved 2021-03-12.
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