Andrew B. Williams, Ph.D.
Chair and Associate Professor
Director, Artificial Intelligence, Informatics, and Robotics (AIR) Lab
Department of Computer and Information Sciences
Spelman College
williams at spelman.edu
http://www.spelman.edu/~williams
350 Spelman Lane SW, Box 217, Atlanta, GA 30314
Research and Teaching Interests
My research and teaching interests are in distributed artificial intelligence, autonomous agents and multi-agent systems, cognitive robotics, and bioinformatics.
Education
- Doctor of Philosophy, Electrical Engineering, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS.
- Master of Science, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Marquette University, Milwaukee, WI.
- Bachelor of Science, Electrical Engineering, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS.
SpelBots Robotics Team
I founded and continue to coach the
SpelBots Robotics Team, the
first
all-women and African American undergraduate team to compete in the
International RoboCup Four-Legged Soccer Competition in Osaka, Japan
(2005) and Bremen, Germany (2006). We earned 2nd place in the RoboCup
2007 Atlanta Technical Challenge Passing Challenge event. In 2009
we accomplished a tie in the Championship match of the RoboCup
Japan Open 2009 Osaka Standard Platform League Nao Humanoid robot
soccer competition. Watch the video recap:
Advancing Technology for Societal Impact (ARTSI) Alliance
I am the Principal Investigator and Director for the ARTSI Alliance, an NSF Sponsored Program for encouraging African Americans to pursue computer science and engineering education in middle school, high school, and college. We are an alliance of twelve HBCUs and seven research institutions that develop educational and research projects centered around robotics and healthcare, the arts, and entrepreneurship. Find out more at http://www.artsialliance.org
Computer and Robotics Education (C.A.R.E.) for African American Students
I am the Principal Investigator for this National Science Foundation (NSF) Broadening Partipation in Computing funded project. This project is being conducted with Carnegie Mellon University and has three components:
- C.A.R.E. Tekkotsu Robotics - Robotics education and curriculum for HBCUs
- C.A.R.E. Camp - A computer animation, leadership, and robotics day camp for middle school students
- C.A.R.E. Olympiad - A five event computer and robotics competition for HBCUs