Andrew B. Williams

Andrew B. Williams, Ph.D., M.B.A., was an Associate Dean for the University of Kansas (KU) School of Engineering and the Charles E. and Mary Jane Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. In his role, he led the strategic planning and implementation efforts to catapult the KU IHAWKe (Indigenous, Hispanic, African American, Women, KU Engineering) Diversity & Women’s Programs to receive the highest inaugural Diversity Recognition Program Award given by the American Society of Engineering Education (ASEE) in 2019. Dr. Williams is a National Science Foundation ScienceMaker, one of 180 African American top scientists and engineers to be interviewed and archived in the HistoryMakers oral history housed in the U.S. Library of Congress. This honor resulted from his national efforts to increase diversity in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) fields and his leadership for the SpelBots, an all-female RoboCup autonomous robotics team from Spelman College where he served as Department Chair in Computer and Information Sciences.  While at Spelman, he was also a Research Affiliate in the Human-Automation Systems Lab at the Georgia Institute of Technology . He has also served as the John P. Raynor Distinguished Chair, where he founded and directed the Humanoid Engineering and Intelligence (HEIR) Lab. His research and education work in autonomous robotics, humanoids, and human-robot interaction have resulted in over 100 technical and education publications and presentations. He is the author of “Out of the Box: Building Robots, Transforming Lives". His research, education, and fundraising efforts have resulted in approximately $29M from private donors, funding agencies such as the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, NASA, and companies and foundations including Apple, Google, Microsoft, Boeing, General Motors, General Electric, Coca Cola, Halliburton, Kiewit, Black and Veatch, Terracon, Burns and McDonnell, ExxonMobil, HNTB, J.E. Dunn Construction, and Matterport. Dr. Williams is an alumnus of the National Academy of Engineering’s (NAE) U.S. and Japan-America, Frontiers of Engineering Program. He also has worked at Apple Inc., GE Medical Systems, Allied Signal Aerospace Company, and as a Boeing Welliver Faculty Fellow. He received his B.S. in electrical engineering from the University of Kansas, his M.S. in electrical and computer engineering from Marquette University, his Ph.D. in electrical engineering with an emphasis in artificial intelligence from the University of Kansas, and his M.B.A. from Rockhurst University. Dr. Williams currently serves on the ACM Education Advisory Committee, the GEM Consortium Alumni Advisory Board, and the NAE Workshop Committee on Sharing Exemplary Admissions Practices that Promote Diversity in Engineering. He is married to Anitra Williams for 29 years and proudly has a son and a daughter that are engineers, a daughter studying engineering, and a daughter-in-law.