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Prof. Williams was born and grew up in Ringwood, New Jersey, which is
a town about one hours drive northwest of NYC, right near the NJ/NY
border. He attended college at the University of Delaware in Newark,
DE from 1989-1993, where he majored in Chemical Engineering with a
minor in Music Performance. While at Delaware he performed
undergraduate research in materials science, studying the synthesis
and thermodynamic phase diagrams of layered perovskite materials under
the direction of Prof. Douglas J. Buttrey. In 1993 he joined the
graduate program in Chemical Engineering at Purdue University in West
Lafayette, IN to pursue a Ph.D. He worked under the guidance of
Profs. Christos G. Takoudis (now in Chemical Engineering at the
University of Illinois – Chicago) and Michael J. Weaver (formerly in
Chemistry at Purdue, now deceased). His Ph.D. thesis involved the use
of surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) to study transition
metal catalyzed reactions of small molecules such as CO, O2,
H2, NO and CH3OH. After receiving his Ph.D. in
1997, Prof. Williams went to the University of Oxford in Oxford, UK to
do a post doc with Prof. Colin Bain in the Physical and Theoretical
Chemistry Department. While at Oxford his research focused on
learning non-linear optical spectroscopy and developing new ways of
applying these approaches to heterogeneous catalysts. Following
this post-doctoral research, he joined the faculty at the University
of South Carolina in the Department of Chemical Engineering as an
Assistant Professor in the Fall of 1999. He was recently tenured and
promoted to the rank of Associate Professor. During the last 7 years
he has taught ECHE 300 “Chemical Process Principles”, ECHE 430
“Chemical Engineering Kinetics” and ECHE 730 "Chemical Reactor
Design". He has also taught two special topics graduate electives, ECHE
789W “Optical techniques for the Study of Interfacial Phenomena” and
ECHE 789C "Fundamentals of Industrial Catalysis". He is currently in
charge of Departmental undergraduate scholarships, as well as a member
of the Undergraduate Committee and the advisor for the AIChE student
chapter. Aside from his research and teaching activities, he enjoys
reading legal, detective, and political thrillers and is an avid
moviegoer. He also is an accomplished trombone player, having played
in wind ensembles, jazz bands, and orchestras throughout his academic
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