Prize Recipient

Ellen D. Williams
University of Maryland

Citation:

"For her elegant experimental exploration of the structures and phase transitions of surfaces and for her effective communication on this subject in lectures and publications."

Background:

Ellen D. Williams received her undergraduate degree from Michigan State University in 1976, and her PhD in Chemistry from Caltech in 1981. She began as a post-doctoral fellow in Physics at the University of Maryland in 1981, and has risen through the ranks to become Distinguished University Professor of Physics. She is the Director of the Materials Science and Engineering Center at the University of Maryland.

Professor Williams's research is in surface physics. The objective of her research group is to develop practical capabilities for characterizing and predicting the evolution of materials structures on nanometer to micron length scales. She was a Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Fellow in 1996, and was the recipient of the E. W. Mueller Award of the University of Wisconsin in 1996. She was the recipient of the Maria Goeppert-Mayer Award of the APS in 1990. She is a fellow of the APS and of the American Vacuum Society, and was an Office of Naval Research Young Investigator in 1986-89, and a Presidential Young Investigator in 1984-89.

Selection Committee:

Patricia M Mooney (Chair), Francis Hellman, Marc Kastner, Bertram Batlogg ('00 Recipient), Alan R. Bishop