Professor John Williams was recently named alongside Bill Gates and Larry Ellison as one of the 50 most powerful people for Computer Networks in the world. Dr. Williams holds a BA in physics from Oxford University, a MS in physics from UCLA and a Ph.D. from Swansea University. His area of specialty is large scale computer analysis applied to both physical systems and to information.



Dr. Williams is internationally recognized in the field of computational algorithms for large-scale particle simulators and has authored two books and over 100 publications. For the past eight years, his research has focused on architecting of large scale distributed simulation systems. He teaches graduate courses on Modern Software Development and on Web System Architecting.



Presently Dr. Williams is Director of MIT's Auto-ID Laboratory that is architecting “The Internet of Things”. He was recently named, alongside Bill Gates and Larry Ellison, as one of the 50 most powerful people in Computer Networks. He serves on the Architectural Review Committee for EPCglobal Inc. and is Co-Director of the global alliance of Auto-ID Laboratories. He is project leader of the Grid/Agent Computing Program whose goal is to develop distributed systems that simulate the U.S. critical infrastructure. He is involved in a number of other projects for industry, including developing RFID sensor networks for Kajima Corporation and E-Educational software for Microsoft via their I-Campus Program. Dr. Williams’ analysis software system is licensed by Sandia National Laboratories and petroleum companies and his E-Education software is licensed by over 400 institutions in the US, Europe and Japan. Recent papers on the InkBoard collaboration software for the Tablet PC have won best paper prizes in conferences and generated press reports in US News and World Report, CNN, and the Boston Globe.



Dr. Williams is on the editorial advisory board for the International Journal for Computer-Aided Engineering and Software and an active member of ASCE, where he is a member of the Committee for Granular Materials. Dr. Williams consults to companies in the U.S., U.K., Ireland, and Japan and has spent much time in Japan collaborating with the University of Osaka, Aoyama University, and Keio University, on the use of educational technology.