Richard Ryan Williams, known as Ryan Williams (born 1979), is an American theoretical computer scientist working in

computational complexity theory In theoretical computer science and mathematics, computational complexity theory focuses on classifying computational problems according to their resource usage, and relating these classes to each other. A computational problem is a task solved ...

and

algorithms In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm () is a finite sequence of rigorous instructions, typically used to solve a class of specific problems or to perform a computation. Algorithms are used as specifications for performing ...

Education

Williams graduated from the

Alabama School of Mathematics and Science The Alabama School of Mathematics and Science (ASMS) is a public residential high school in the Midtown neighborhood of Mobile, Alabama. ASMS is a member of the National Consortium of Secondary STEM Schools (NCSSS). It graduated its first class ...

before receiving his

bachelor's degree A bachelor's degree (from Middle Latin ''baccalaureus'') or baccalaureate (from Modern Latin ''baccalaureatus'') is an undergraduate academic degree awarded by colleges and universities upon completion of a course of study lasting three to si ...

in math and computer science from

Cornell University Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to tea ...

in 2001 and his Ph.D in computer science in 2007 from

Carnegie Mellon University Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. One of its predecessors was established in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie as the Carnegie Technical Schools; it became the Carnegie Institute of Technology ...

under the supervision of Manuel Blum. From 2010 to 2012, he was a member of the Theory Group of

IBM Almaden Research Center IBM Research is the research and development division for IBM, an American multinational information technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, with operations in over 170 countries. IBM Research is the largest industrial research o ...

. From Fall 2011 to Fall 2016, he was a professor at Stanford University. In January 2017, he joined the faculty at MIT.

Research

Williams has been a member of the program committee for the

Symposium on Theory of Computing The Annual ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing (STOC) is an academic conference in the field of theoretical computer science. STOC has been organized annually since 1969, typically in May or June; the conference is sponsored by the Association for ...

in 2011 and various other conferences. He won the Ron V. Book best student paper award at the IEEE Conference on Computational Complexity in 2005 and 2007, and at the best student paper award at the International Colloquium on Automata, Languages and Programming in 2004 from the

European Association for Theoretical Computer Science The European Association for Theoretical Computer Science (EATCS) is an international organization with a European focus, founded in 1972. Its aim is to facilitate the exchange of ideas and results among theoretical computer scientists as well as ...

. Williams’s result that the complexity class NEXP is not contained in ACC⁰ received the best paper award at the Conference on Computational Complexity in 2011. Complexity theorist

Scott Aaronson Scott Joel Aaronson (born May 21, 1981) is an American theoretical computer scientist and David J. Bruton Jr. Centennial Professor of Computer Science at the University of Texas at Austin. His primary areas of research are quantum computing ...

has called the result "one of the most spectacular of the decade".. Williams has also worked on the computational complexity of ''k''-anonymity.

Personal life

Ryan is married to Virginia Vassilevska Williams, also a theoretical computer scientist.

Selected publications

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References

External links

Ryan William’s homepage
at MIT * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Williams, Ryan Theoretical computer scientists Living people 1979 births Cornell University alumni Stanford University faculty Massachusetts Institute of Technology faculty