Faculty/Researcher List

Ellen Williams

Distinguished University ProfessorDirector, MRSEC
UMD - Faculty

Research

Materials, Devices, Characterization

Research on the influence of thermal fluctuations on nanoscale fabrication and device properties.

Ellen Williams is an experimentalist who works on the applications of statistical mechanics to problems of nanostructure formation, stability and functional behavior. . Professor William’s group has pioneered the application of scanning tunneling microscopy to the quantitative determination and interpretation of structural fluctuations, and now applies this approach to problems in organic electronics, electromigration and sensing. She came to the Physics Department of the University of Maryland in 1981 from Caltech, where she received her Ph.D. in physical chemistry. She has received the Maria Goeppert Mayer Award and the Adler Lectureship Award from the American Physical Society, and the David Turnbull Award from the Materials Research Society. In 1995, she founded the NSF-sponsored Materials Research and Engineering Center at the University of Maryland, and continues to serve as director of the Center. She is a member of the American Association of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences. She has served on numerous committees and editorial boards, including (at present) the University of California National Security Panel, the APS Physics Policy Committee, the Board of Directors of the Materials Research Society, the board of reviewing editors for Science Magazine and the editorial boards for Nanoletters, and for the Journal of Applied Physics and Applied Physics Letters.