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 simulation applied to both physical systems and to information analysis. Dr. Williams is internationally recognized in the field of computational algorithms for large-scale simulators and has authored two books and over 100 publications. For the past ten years, his research has focused on architecting of large scale distributed simulation systems including issues relating to cyber security. He teaches graduate courses on Modern Software Development and on Applied Cyber Security.

Presently Dr. Williams is Director of MIT’s Geospatial Data Center that researches geospatial infrastructure systems. He was Director of the AutoID Laboratory for ten years and project leader of the Grid/Agent Computing Program whose goal is to protect the U.S. critical infrastructure. He is involved in a number of other projects for industry, including developing RFID sensor networks 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 institutions in the US, Europe and Japan. Recent papers on collaboration software have won best paper prizes in conferences and generated press reports in US News and World Report, CNN, and the Boston Globe. Most recently his paper on HPC won best paper in HPC 2011.

Personal Statement

Positions and Honors (non MIT)

1968-71           Old Members Scholar, Lincoln College, Oxford University, UK

1971-73           Research Associate, U.C.L.A. Physics Dept.

1973-78           Research Assistant, then Senior Research Fellow, Swansea University, Wales

1978-81           Managing Principal in Charge, Dames and Moore, Boston Office, USA

1981-89           Vice President, Applied Mechanics Inc, Lakewood, CO, USA

1989-90           Senior Lecturer, University of Wales, Swansea, UK

1990-97           Associate Professor (without tenure), MIT

1997-07           Associate Professor (with tenure), MIT

Selected Peer-reviewed Publications

Williams, J., S. Herrero-Lopez, C. Leonardi, S. Chan, A. Sanchez, and Z. Aung, Large in-memory cyber-physical security-related analytics via scalable coherent shared memory architectures, in Proceedings of the IEEE Symposium on Computational Intelligence in Cyber Security, pp. 1-9, 2011.

Arenas-Martínez, M., S. Herrero-Lopez, A. Sanchez, J. Williams, P. Roth, P. Hofmann, and A. Zeier, A comparative study of data storage and processing architectures for the smart grid, in Proceedings of the First IEEE International Conference on Smart Grid Communications, pp. 285-290, 2010.

Aung, Z., J. Williams, A. Sanchez, M. Toukhy, and S. Herrero-Lopez, Towards accurate load forecasting in smart power grids, submitted to The 16th Pacific-Asia Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, May 2012.

Faisal, M. A., Z. Aung, J. Williams, and A. Sanchez, Securing advanced metering infrastructure using two-layered intrusion detection system, to be submitted to The 11th International Conference on Developments in Power System Protection - Protecting the Smart Grid, Birmingham, UK, April 2012.

Li, D., Z. Aung, J. Williams, and A. Sanchez, Efficient authentication scheme for data aggregation in smart grid with fault tolerance and fault diagnosis, accepted for publication at 2012 IEEE Power and Energy Society Conference on Innovative Smart Grid Technologies, Washington D.C., USA, January 2012.

Li, D., Z. Aung, S. Sampalli, J. Williams, and A. Sanchez, Privacy preservation for smart metering data via accountable group key scheme, submitted to IEEE Transactions on Smart Grids, Special Issue on Computational Intelligence Applications in Smart Grids, 2011.

Williams, J., S. Herrero-Lopez, C. Leonardi, S. Chan, A. Sanchez, and Z. Aung, Large in-memory cyber-physical security-related analytics via scalable coherent shared memory architectures, in Proceedings of the IEEE Symposium on Computational Intelligence in Cyber Security, pp. 1-9, 2011.

Williams, J.R. and Amaratunga K., "A Discrete Wavelet Transform without Edge Effects Using Wavelet Extrapolation," The Journal of Fourier Analysis and Applications, Vol. 3, Number 4, 1997

Florian Michahelles, Frederic Thiesse, Albrecht Schmidt, and John R. Williams, Pervasive RFID and Near Field Communication Technology, IEEE Computer Society  vol. 6, no. 3, 94-96, c3, Jul-Sept, 2007

Leonardi, C., Holmes, D.W., Williams, J.R. , Tilke, P.G., A Multi-Core Numerical Framework for Characterizing Flow in Oil Reservoirs, Presented at the SCS Spring Simulation Multi-Conference – SpringSim 2011, April 4-7, 2011 – Boston, USA, Awarded Best Paper in the 19th High Performance Computing Symposium and Best Overall Paper at SpringSim 2011

2011-2013 Center for Complex Engineering Systems - Integrated Energy Decision Support System

Role: Co-PI with Prof. Crawley (President SkTech)  Sponsor: CCES/ KACST Saudi Arabia

2009-2011: [PI] Data Mining for Smart Grids,  Sponsor: Masdar Institute  This research develops a simulator for the electrical smart grid to investigate future billing systems and also cyber security systems.

2011-2013 [PI]  Designing New Hydrofracturing Fluids Containing Particulates, Shell Petroleum

2012-2013 Modeling Cyber Range for Cyber Security, Sponsor Lincoln Labs, Boston

2012-2013 Design and Implementation of Negative Authentication System, US Intelligence Advanced Research Project Agency.

Contact information:  Email: jrw@mit.edu; Phone: +1-617-253-7201; Address: 77 Massachusetts Av., Room 1-250, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA