Professor Williams obtained his BSc (1969) and PhD (1973) from the University of New South Wales before moving to Europe and North America for a series of research appointments, including a member of technical staff at Bell Telephone Laboratories, New Jersey, USA. He returned to an academic post at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in 1978 where he became Director of the Microelectronics and Materials Technology Centre in 1982. In 1988 he moved to the Research School of Physical Sciences at ANU as Foundation Professor of the Department of Electronic Materials Engineering. In 1997 he assumed the role of Associate Director of the Research School of Physics & Engineering at ANU and took up the Directorship of the School in 2002. He retired from this position in 2012 and is now an Emeritus Professor at ANU.
His research has been in the diverse areas of materials science, nanotechnology, ion-solid interactions, semiconductor processing and high pressure research for nearly 50 years. He has published over 500 refereed papers and five books within these fields, with over 12,000 citations and a H index of 59. He is best known internationally for his pioneering work on ion implantation into semiconductors, solid phase epitaxial growth, development of ion beam analysis methods, impurity gettering and nanoindentation of semiconductors, the latter area leading to prospects for novel patterning of silicon at room temperature. He has served on the editorial board of ten international journals and three international conference series. He was awarded the Boas Medal of the Australian Institute of Physics (1993) and the Thomas Rankin Lyle Medal of the Australian Academy of Science (2011). He is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science, the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering, the Materials Research Society, and the American Physical Society. Until recently he was Vice President and Secretary for Physical Sciences at the Australian Academy of Science, and is a past Chair of this Academy’s National Committee for Materials Science and Engineering. He has been a Vice President of the International Union of Materials Research Societies, is currently Secretary of this International Union and is a Past President of the Australian Materials Research Society. He has been the founding director or initiator of two spin off companies, Acton Semiconductors and WRiota, in 1999 and 2004, respectively.
Qualifications:
BSc PhD NSW, FAA, FTSE, FAIP, FIEAust
