Andrew B. Williams, Ph.D.
Computer and Information Sciences
This summer, Dr. Andrew Williams, will travel with his RoboCup robot soccer team, the SpelBots, to Osaka, Japan to compete in the International RoboCup 2005. Dr. Williams recently joined the faculty at Spelman College in August 2004 after five years as an assistant professor in electrical and computer engineering at the University of Iowa.
“Many people wonder why I would come to Spelman from a Big 10 major research institution. When it comes down to it, it was due to spiritual reasons. I decided that one reason God made me was to uplift and enable African American young people academically, vocationally, spiritually and economically.”
“I want the world to know what is possible when we inspire our young women and men of African descent to dream beyond themselves…dream seemingly impossible dreams that become possible when you believe in a Creator much bigger than yourself.”
Prior to coming to Spelman, Dr. Williams acquired in excess of $1 million dollars in research funding from the National Institutes of Health, Microsoft, and the National Science Foundation while at the University of Iowa. Since joining Spelman, Dr. Williams has brought with him to the College over $400,000 of his NIH research funding, helped secure over $30,000 of NASA funding. His SpelBots research, teaching, and service efforts also had a hand in the $50,000 gift given to Spelman from the Coca-Cola Foundation.
He has published in research journals in the area of artificial intelligence, bioinformatics, robotics, multi-agent systems, and ontologies. During his first year at Spelman, he published his work in the IEEE Transactions on Data and Knowledge Engineering, and has had four other papers accepted for publication, two of which of have Spelman student co-authors. This past fall, he was selected as one of thirty U.S. engineers to participate in a research conference sponsored by the National Academy of Engineering and the Engineering Academy of Japan in Kyoto, Japan.
His bioinformatics research at Spelman focuses on using artificial intelligence (AI) techniques to help clinicians and geneticists define new phenotypes to reach consensus on phenotype nomenclature and classification, necessary for discovery the location of disease genes. “Some of my collaborators recently published a new disease gene finding for Age-related Macular Degeneration; and the research I’ve done since being at Spelman has positioned us to test out new hypotheses related to our AI techniques and this disease.”
The research that has been getting the most attention recently is his research related to robotics and the international RoboCup project. RoboCup is an international joint research project to advance artificial intelligence by using competitions, such as soccer, to demonstrate new computer algorithms.
“Robots, in the future, will be able to assist humans in tasks such as building lunar habitats or search and rescue people trapped in a burning building or even to help operate on people. At Spelman College, we are seeking to advance this research through our participation in RoboCup.” Spelman provided Dr. Williams with a robotics lab in the science center complete with four Sony AIBO four-legged robots to help fulfill his vision to form a Spelman team to compete in the international robot competition.
“I want the world to know what is possible when we inspire our young women and men of African descent to dream beyond themselves…dream seemingly impossible dreams that become possible when you believe in a Creator much bigger than yourself.”
Dr. Williams received his Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering from the University of Kansas, his Master of Science degree in electrical and computer engineering from Marquette University, and his Doctor of Philosophy degree in electrical engineering from the University of Kansas. He was previously employed at Allied Signal Aerospace Company (now Honeywell), and GE Medical Systems, where he graduated from their Edison Engineering Technical Leadership Development program. He is happily married to his wife of thirteen years and has three beautiful children.
Posted By:
Sunday, August 14th 2005 at 2:54PM
You can also
click
here to view all posts by this author...
