Stan Williams

He is currently focused on developing technology that supports the concept of CeNSE: The Central Nervous System for the Earth. The idea is that nanotechnology has the potential to revolutionize human interaction with the Earth as profoundly as the Internet has revolutionized personal and business interaction.

Prompted by his exploration of the fundamental limits of information and computing, Williams recently completed extensive research in nano-electronics and nano-photonics.

For the past 30 years, his primary scientific research has been in the areas of solid-state chemistry and physics, and their applications to technology. This has evolved into the areas of nanostructures and chemically-assembled materials, with an emphasis on the thermodynamics of size and shape.

Williams has been awarded more than 60 U.S. patents, published more than 300 papers in reviewed scientific journals and presented hundreds of invited plenary, keynote and named lectures at international scientific, technical and business events.

He has received numerous awards for business, scientific and academic achievement. Most recently he received the prestigious 2007 Glenn T. Seaborg Medal awarded by the UCLA Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry.

He was named to the inaugural Scientific American 50 Top Technology leaders in 2002 and then again in 2005 (the first to be so named twice). In 2005, Small Times magazine named the U.S. patent collection Williams has assembled at HP as the world’s top nanotechnology intellectual property portfolio and in 2000, MIT’s Technology Review placed one of his patents among the top 5 that “will transform business and technology.”

Williams received a bachelor of arts in chemical physics in 1974 from Rice University and a Ph.D. in physical chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley in 1978. He was a member of technical staff at AT&T Bell Labs from 1978 to 1980 and a faculty member of the Chemistry Department at UCLA from 1980 to 1995.