Ellen D. Williams

Ellen D. Williams (born December 5, 1953 in Oshkosh, Wisconsin) is an American scientist, best known for her research in surface properties and nanotechnology, for her engagement with technical issues in national security, as chief scientist of BP, and for government service as director of ARPA-E.

Born in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, Williams grew up in the suburbs of Detroit, Michigan.,. She attended Michigan State University and received her B.S. in chemistry in 1976. Her graduate studies were at Caltech, where she received her Ph.D. in Chemistry in 1981, under the supervision of William Henry Weinberg.

Ellen D. Williams

Williams did postdoctoral studies at the University of Maryland under the supervision of R.L. Park from 1981 to 1983. Then promoted to assistant professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, which is part of the University of Maryland College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences, she advanced to associate professor in 1987, and professor of Physics and the Institute for Physical Science and Technology in 1991. Building on her fundamental work on the morphology of solid surfaces, she founded the University of Maryland Materials Research Group in 1991 and led its expansion to become the Materials Research Science and Engineering Center in 1996. She served as its Director from 1996 through 2009. In 2000 she was named Distinguished University Professor. She was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2003, and to the National Academy of Sciences in 2005. She served as the Chair of the NAS committee on Technical Issues Concerning the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty from 2009-11.

In 2010, Williams took a leave of absence from UMD to become chief scientist at BP, a position which she held until April 2014. Then, having been nominated by President Barack Obama in November 2013 to become director of ARPA-E and awaiting Senate confirmation, she became a senior adviser in the office of the Secretary of Energy. She was confirmed on December 8, 2014, and subsequently sworn into her position at ARPA-E.

Academic Research

Williams' research in experimental surface science explores fundamental issues in statistical mechanics, particularly including practical applications nanotechnology. Her research group pioneered applications of direct imaging techniques for atomic-scale structures on surfaces. She worked closely with theorists to design experiments to address theoretical and conceptual questions important to the fields of catalysis, thin film growth and nano-electronics. She has published over 200 academic articles, which have been cited over 8000 times. Her most widely cited work includes at least four areas of fundamental research (see Selected Publications below); structure-transport relationships in graphene, surface morphology and step fluctuations, electronic interactions with surface defects, and adsorbate-interactions.

Technical Issues in National Security

In parallel with her academic career, Williams has worked extensively in providing technical advice to the U.S. government, primarily through the Departments of Energy and Defense. As a result of her experience, in 2009 she was asked to lead a study on issues of verification of nuclear testing, which was one of the concerns cited in the Senate decision not to ratify the treaty in 1999. The resulting report, reviews the verification capabilities in the US and at the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Organization (CTBTO), and shows that detection capability advanced significantly over the years after the 1999 U.S. decision not to ratify. The report places the state-of-the art detection capability in the context of different types of proliferation threats, and thus provides a valuable context for decision makers. The report also emphasizes the importance of sustaining and continuing to advance technical capabilities for verification, both in the U.S. and at the CTBTO.

Chief Scientist at BP

At BP, Williams worked in Group Technology, where she was responsible for assurance of technology programs, and strategic research and program development. Early in her tenure, she set up the initial advisory structure for BP’s Gulf of Mexico Research InitiativeWithin the company, she advocated for increased implementation of advanced computational approaches in molecular chemistry, fluid dynamics, and distributed sensing and ‘big data’ analysis. She also led a strategic multi-university research program on natural resource constraints in the context of energy (the Energy Sustainability Challenge),. In addition to the extensive University research publications that resulted from the program, the ESC team also created three reference booklets on energy-resource issues, “The ESC Materials Handbook", “Water in the Energy Industry,”, and “Biomass in the Energy Industry”. Williams has spoken widely about the need for advances in Science and Technology to sustainably supply the energy the world needs.

Department of Energy

Prior to Senate confirmation for her role in ARPA-E, Williams served as a senior advisor to the Secretary on DOE’s technology transfer policies, issues, and plans. She established the Departments’s new Office of Technology Transitionsto expand the economic impact of the Department’s extensive Research and Development activities.

Williams joined ARPA-E just before its sixth anniversary, as the Agency’s portfolio of active and alumni technology development programsis forming a pipeline of energy technology innovation that ranges from early stage to more mature stages of technical readiness. As a result of ARPA-E’s unique operational model, in which projects are managed both against ambitious technical and commercial goals, increasing numbers of the mature projects are proving attractive to follow-on investors, have products in field testing, or have early stage commercial products

in 2016 she was elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society (London).

Additional honors include:

Distinguished Alumnus Award, California Institute of Technology 2016

Honorary Ph.D., Michigan State University, 2016

National Academy of Sciences, 2005

Materials Research Society – David Turnbull Award, 2003

American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2003

American Physical Society – David Adler Lectureship Award, 2001

Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Fellow (1996)

Fellow of the American Vacuum Society, 1993

Fellow of the American Physical Society, 1993

American Physical Society Maria Goeppert Mayer Award, 1990

Office of Naval Research Young Investigator, 1986-1989

Presidential Young Investigator, 1984-1989

Structure-transport relationships in graphene

Applying the experimental approaches developed through her career, Williams worked with collaborator Michael Fuhrer to develop key early understanding about structural fluctuations and defect interactions in defining graphene’s properties.

2007 Masa Ishigami, J. H. Chen, W. G. Cullen, M. S. Fuhrer, and E. D. Williams, “Atomic Structure of Graphene on SiO2 , Nano Letters 7, 1643-8
2008 J.H. Chen, C. Jang, M.S. Fuhrer, E.D. Williams and M. Ishigami, Charged impurity scattering in graphene, Nature Physics 4, 377- 381
2009 J. H. Chen, W. G. Cullen, C. Jang, M. S. Fuhrer and E. D. Williams , Defect Scattering in Graphene, Physical Review Letters 102, 236805
2011 J.-H. Chen, L. Li, W.G. Cullen, E.D. Williams and M.S. Fuhrer, Tunable Kondo effect in graphene with defects, Nature Physics, 7, 535

Surface morphology and step fluctuations

Williams’ research group discovered the remarkable ability of silicon surfaces to undergo reversible micron-scale changes in structure, and demonstrated how such changes are thermodynamically defined by changes in the free-energy of steps on the surface. The group’s subsequent experimental work elegantly placed observations of structures and fluctuations of steps in a universally applicable theoretical formalism.

1987 R.J. Phaneuf and E.D. Williams. “Surface Phase Separation of Vicinal Si(111),” Phys. Rev. Lett. 58: 2563.

1990 X.-S. Wang, J.R. Goldberg, N.C. Bartelt and E.D. Williams, Terrace Width Distributions on Vicinal Si(111), Phys. Rev. Lett. 65: 2430-33.

1991 E.D. Williams and N.C. Bartelt, Thermodynamics of Surface Morphology,” Science 251, 393 (1991), (Review Article)

1993 N.C. Bartelt, T.L. Einstein, E.D. Williams, J. J. Métois, J.C. Heyraud, J.L Goldberg, The Brownian Motion of Steps on Vicinal Si(111), Phys. Rev. B48, 15453.

1991 R.J. Phaneuf, N.C. Bartelt, E.D. Williams, W. Swiech and E. Bauer., LEEM Investigation of Orientational Phase Separation on Vicinal Si(111), Phys. Rev. Lett. 21, 2986.

1999 H.-C. Jeong and E.D. Williams, “Steps on Surfaces: Experiment and Theory,” Surface Sci. Report, 34 ; 171-294. (Review Article)

2001 K. Thuermer, J. Reutt-Robey, E.D. Williams, M. Uwaha, A. Emundts and H.P. Bonzel, “Step Dynamics in 3D Crystal Shape Relaxation” Phys. Rev. Lett. 87: 186102-4.

Electronic interactions with surface defects

Williams’ group also explored the interaction of surface structure with electric fields and currents. They demonstrated how the incredibly small momentum-transfer due to an electron colliding with an atom can none-the-less cause micron-scale rearrangements of the material near the surfaces.

1996 Y. N. Yang, E. Fu and E.D. Williams, An STM Study of Current Induced Step Bunching on Si(111), Surface Sci. 356, 101 111.

1995 E.D. Williams, E. Fu, Y. N. Yang, D. Kandel and J.D. Weeks, Measurement of the Anisotropy Ratio During Current Induced Step Bunching, Surface Sci. 336, L746.

2000 C.S. Ganpule, V. Nagarajan, S.B. Ogale, A.L. Roytburd, E.D. Williams, and R. Ramesh, Domain nucleation and relaxation kinetics in ferroelectric thin films, Applied Physics Letters 77 3275-3277.

2010 C.G. Tao, W.G. Cullen and E.D. Williams, Visualizing the Electron Scattering Force in Nanostructures, Science 328, 736-740

Adsorbate-interactions

Williams’ graduate work explored how catalytically important molecules such as carbon monoxide and hydrogen interact with metal surfaces. She made seminal observations of how such molecules organize on surfaces and how the molecules (which are called ‘adsorbates’ once they are on the surface) interact with each other. The nature of such adsorbates and their relationship to the formation of structures on surfaces informed all of Williams’ subsequent work.

1978 E.D. Williams, S. L. Cunningham and W.H. Weinberg, A Determination of Adatom Adatom Interaction Energies: Application to Oxygen Chemisorbed on the Tungsten (110) Surface, J. Chem. Phys. 68, 4688.

1979 E.D. Williams and W.H. Weinberg, The Geometric Structure of Carbon Monoxide Chemisorbed on the Ruthenium (001) Surface at Low Temperatures,”Surface Sci. 82, 93

1980 E.D. Williams, P.A. Thiel, W.H. Weinberg, and J.T. Yates, Jr., Segregation of Co absorbed Species: Hydrogen and Carbon Monoxide on the Rh(111) Surface, J. Chem. Phys. 72, 3496

1994 Y. N. Yang and E.D. Williams, High Atom Density in the "1x1" Phase Origin of the Metastable Reconstructions on Si(111), Phys Rev. Lett. 72, 1862

2005 Bo Xu, Chenggang Tao, William G. Cullen, Janice E. Reutt-Robey, and Ellen D. Williams, Chiral Symmetry Breaking in Two-Dimensional C60-ACA Intermixed Systems, Nano Letters 5, 2207-11.