Ellen Williams
NASA Advisory Council Member
Dr. Ellen Williams
Distinguished University Professor and Director, Earth Systems Science Interdisciplinary Center, University of Maryland
University of Maryland Distinguished Professor Ellen Williams earned her B.S. in 1976 from Michigan State University and her Ph.D. in Chemistry in 1981 from the California Institute of Technology. Her research interests are in surface chemistry and nanotechnology. She founded the University of Maryland Materials Research Science and Engineering Center and served as its Director from 1996 through 2009. She served as Chief Scientist at BP from 2010-14, and as Director of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) from 2014 until early 2017. In July 2020, she was named director of the University of Maryland’s Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center (ESSIC) for a five-year term.
Dr. Williams is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a foreign member of the Royal Society (London). She is also a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Physical Society, and the American Vacuum Society.
