Meet EPA Chemist Antony Williams, Ph.D.
Dr. Antony Williams builds software applications that provide access to data and models to scientists, both within and outside of EPA.
Tell us about your background.
I received my Bachelor of Science in Chemistry from the University of Liverpool in 1985. I obtained my PhD in Chemistry from the University of London, England, in 1988 focusing on High Pressure Nuclear Magnetic Resonance studies of lubricant related systems.
I left the UK to live in Canada and postdoc’ed in the area of Single Crystal Electron Paramagnetic Resonance examining free radicals trapped in crystals. From there I ran the nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) facility at the University of Ottawa, and then moved to the United States as the NMR Technology Leader for the Eastman Kodak Company. While running multiple labs across Kodak, I identified the need to build a laboratory information management system (LIMs) when the web was just taking off, so we built a WIMS (web-based LIMS) on Netscape Navigator 1.0. That work immersed me into informatics and building software systems for managing analytical chemistry and chemical structure data for large data collections (in those days) and making them available via a web interface across the entire world for Kodak researchers.
When the CEO of Kodak declared, and I paraphrase, that “Digital photography is not a threat to Kodak’s core business,” I left to join a small start-up company (Advanced Chemistry Development (ACD/Labs) where I worked for ten years and finished my tenure there as their Chief Science Officer. During that time we grew the product line from 6 to 60 commercial products delivering software to chemical and pharmaceutical companies around the world. During that phase of my career, I would sometimes travel up to quarter of a million miles in a year.
While at ACD/Labs I started a hobby project with a group of friends and we built ChemSpider, a free website containing data for millions of chemicals. Within two years we sold it to the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) in the United Kingdom and I joined as their VP of Strategic Development for over 5 years. Today, ChemSpider has over100,000 users a day and provides access to data for over 100 million chemicals. From there I joined EPA.
When did you first know you wanted to be a scientist?
I always liked mixing “stuff” in flasks, creating smoke and instant oxidation. But the real reason I did a degree in chemistry was to become a policeman and speed up going up the police hierarchy with a degree. I only fell in love with chemistry during a summer project during my bachelor’s work looking at Vitamin E and related antioxidants. I was fascinated by analytical spectroscopy and enjoyed using enormous expensive machines to probe molecular level details. I was hooked.
What do you like most about your research?
I like translating the outputs of the research from our center into a form that can be consumed by the community. Building web-based applications to provide access to the assembly of research outputs that my colleagues work so hard to produce is a great experience. It engages me with the incredibly smart people I work with and I get to shine a light on the incredible work coming out of the center. It’s a combination of science, translation and, I am not ashamed to say, educational marketing.
How does your science matter?
The software applications we build provide access to data and models in a manner that can be consumed easily by scientists, both within and outside of the Agency. Our ultimate goal in our center is to speed up the evaluation of the potential human health and environmental risks resulting from exposures to chemicals in the environment and I am involved with the development of solutions to meet that goal. It’s a lofty, necessary and important goal and I am in exactly the right place to contribute what I can.
If you weren’t a scientist, what would you be doing?
I have an entrepreneurial spirit and have been told I could “market a bottle of water to a drowning man”. I prefer to think of myself of a someone identifying ways to bring new technologies to bear on problems affecting society, but I definitely have a start-up mentality and like to work on proof-of-concept software applications to see what will work.
What advice would you give a student interested in a career in science?
Develop broad skills before going too deep in science. Learning something about a lot of things makes you way more marketable and can help you cross domains much easier. When you find that special domain that just captures you, dive in and enjoy…but always be willing to jump at the chance to learn more in other areas. You’ll never be bored, and learning can be so much fun.
If you can have any superpower, what would you choose?
I’d like to be “Go-For-It Man” and encourage people to push themselves harder, don’t fear the unknown and run hard at a goal without fear of failure. I see so many examples of paralysis by analysis by individuals about their own capabilities and teams limiting themselves. I’d like the ability to lift all of the glass walls that are limiting people to be their best selves and accept failure as an okay outcome. (I am always available to mentor …but you might get hurt).
What do you think the coolest scientific discovery was and why?
Gravitational waves. What a combination of predictive theory blended with an enormous commitment to build equipment to validate a hypothesis. And then they waited. Now that’s an example of go big or go home and go-for-it that matches my entrepreneurial spirit.
If you could have dinner with any scientist, past or present, who would you choose?
Stephen Hawking. I saw him in a “watering hole” in Cambridge once, knew who he was but didn’t have the gusto to go over and ask if I could sit in on the “conversation.” Despite his perceived physical limitations, his contributions to theoretical physics are immense. I would simply like to thank him for his authorship, his contributions, and his voice on the Pink Floyd Division Bell album and wish he was still alive to “Keep Talkin.”
Editor's Note: The opinions expressed herein are those of the researcher alone. EPA does not endorse the opinions or positions expressed.