Michael Williams

Research Interests

Professor Williams is the founder and leader of the LHCb group at MIT and the inaugural Deputy Director of the NSF AI Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Fundamental Interactions (IAIFI). He works on advancing our knowledge of fundamental particles by both proposing and performing novel experimental measurements at cutting-edge facilities. Prof. Williams is primarily focused on searching for as-yet-unknown particles and forces, possibly components of the dark sector of matter, and on studying largely unexplored emergent properties of the strong nuclear force. The LHCb group at MIT is a leader in the LHCb real-time data-processing system. Mike also works on advancing the usage of machine learning algorithms and other state-of-the-art data-science tools within the domain of particle physics research, and on advancing our understanding of AI itself.

Biographical Sketch

Mike Williams joined the MIT Physics Department as an Assistant Professor in July 2012. He grew up in the suburbs of Pittsburgh, received his undergraduate degree in Mathematics and Physics from Saint Vincent College in 2001 and his Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University in 2007. He was a postdoctoral researcher at Imperial College London from 2008-2012. In 2020, Prof. Williams became the inaugural Deputy Director of the IAIFI.