Professor Williams holds an undergraduate degree in physics from Oxford University, a MSc in physics from UCLA and a PhD from Swansea University. His area of specialty is large scale computer analysis applied to both physical systems and to information. Professor 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 Professor Williams is Director of MIT's Auto-ID Laboratory and has strong involvement in the MIT Geonumerics group. This group is dedicated to the development and implementation of next generation numerical simulator technologies and algorithms as they apply to problems in geoscience, particularly those involving permeable rock and complex multi-phase fluid flows. Such characteristics are key when simulating grain scale physics in oil reservoir rock and problems related to hydrates, carbon sequestration and coal seam gas. Additional areas of interest relate to the simulation of deformable, fracturable and granula media. Of most interest is the development of integrated techniques for simulating solids and liquids together to model important geotechnical phenomena like sanding, bore hole stability and hydrofracturing.