Antony John Williams
Encyclopedia
Antony John Williams, is a British
chemist
and expert in the fields of both nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy and cheminformatics
at the Royal Society of Chemistry
. He is the founder of the ChemSpider
website that was purchased by the Royal Society of Chemistry in May 2009. He is a science blogger, one of the hosts of the SciMobileApps wiki, a community-based wiki for Scientific Mobile Apps, and is a book author.,
Williams is married to Sharon, with whom he has twin boys, Taylor and Tyler.
, Wales
, June 1964 to Ernest Edward Williams, owner of a building contracting firm, and Eirlys Elizabeth Williams. He has one older sister, Rae. He grew up in a small village near Caerwys
.
Williams attended Primary School in both Holywell
and Nannerch
until 1975. From the age of eleven, he attended Alun School
where he received A-levels in mathematics
, geography
, and chemistry
.
Williams earned his B.Sc. in chemistry
from the University of Liverpool
, in 1985, writing an undergraduate dissertation on “Spectroscopic Studies of Vitamin E
Related Systems” where he applied both electron paramagnetic resonance
(EPR) and NMR
to the study of molecules similar in structure to Vitamin E.
Williams earned his Ph.D. in chemistry, funded by Royal Dutch Shell
, from Royal Holloway in 1988 and wrote a thesis entitled "High Pressure NMR
of Lubricant
Related Systems". He won the Bourne Medal from the University of London for this work and developed a unifying theory for modeling NMR relaxation data to examine the molecular motions of alkyl chains. He also used the Cobalt-59 NMR chemical shift for cobalt (III) hexacyanide as both a temperature and pressure probe. During his PhD he developed an interest in personal computers and wrote software programs to fit NMR relaxation data.
Williams continued his work in spectroscopy at the National Research Council (Canada) using EPR spectroscopy to perform single-crystal studies of organometallics compounds.
as their NMR Facility Manager. He continued his personal interests in multinuclear NMR to perform 2D-NMR experiments examining Selenium exchange in mixed-halogen systems. He also performed Silicon-29 and Tellurium-125 NMR studies.
In 1992 he left Canada for Rochester, NY to work for the Eastman Kodak Company as their NMR Technology Leader. At Kodak he used his previous experience in studying alkyl chain related systems to study micelles. He was involved in the early adoption of Liquid Chromatography-NMR into the company and in the development of an Open Access laboratory for chemists to use roboticized analytical instrumentation to generate data. At Kodak he was part of a three member team that developed a web-based LIMS system called WIMS, the Web-based Information Management System and it was the first web-based LIMS system in the world to manage chemical structures and spectral data. He was granted two patents while at Kodak.,
In 1997 he started work for a Canadian start-up company, Advanced Chemistry Development
,(ACD/Labs), as their senior product manager. He was responsible for managing all spectroscopy
, structure drawing and IUPAC nomenclature
, products. While in that role the analytical data management software was expanded to include support for mass spectrometry
, infrared spectroscopy
, UV-Vis spectroscopy, chromatography
and other forms of analytical sciences. His research interests at that time include the development of algorithms for NMR prediction ( and ) and, specifically, development of software approaches to Computer-Assisted Structure Elucidation, so-called CASE systems.,,,,. The CASE tools have been used for the purpose of structure revision whereby algorithms have been demonstrated to outperform human interpretation of spectral data.
While at ACD/Labs Williams was involved in a number of industry firsts including 1) producing a chemical dictionary on a Palm Computer and Pocket PC, 2) working with Gary E. Martin
and other colleagues to develop new NMR processing techniques using covariance
-based approaches, 3) the introduction of fuzzy-logic based approaches to computer-assisted structure elucidation and 4) Approaches for automated structure verification.
While at the company he initiated a hobby project to link together chemistry databases on the web. This project was called ChemSpider
. ChemSpider was formally announced at the Chicago ACS meeting in March 2007 with a database containing over 10 million compounds sourced from PubChem
.
In 2007 when he left ACD/Labs he was the Chief Science Officer. He became an independent consultant working with a number of software companies in the cheminformatics domain, such as SimBioSys
, and with research organizations to support their cheminformatics efforts. In parallel he continued to develop the ChemSpider platform with a small group of like-minded individuals interested in the development of web-based systems to serve chemists., The site is a crowdsourced community for chemistry with chemists depositing their structure collections, spectral data and molecular properties. Williams is focused on educating the community as to the issues of data quality associated with internet chemistry databases.,
In May 2009 the Royal Society of Chemistry
announced that it had acquired ChemSpider. Williams joined RSC as their Vice President of Strategic Development for ChemSpider.
Williams has contributed to the world of “Mobile Chemistry” by contributing to the development of ChemMobi, an iPhone
app for accessing millions of chemical compounds and associated data.
Williams is an advocate for Open Notebook Science
and is a judge for the Open Notebook Science Challenge
. He has worked with Andrew S.I.D. Lang
and Jean-Claude Bradley to deliver a web-based game for teaching the interpretation of spectral data utilizing crowdsourced spectroscopy data deposited onto ChemSpider
.
. He promotes the use of Open Data
, particularly spectral data, publishes in Open Access journals and is an advocate for Open Notebook Science
. Williams is an advocate for freeing pre-clinical data from the pharmaceutical industry on the internet.,, Williams has worked closely with Sean Ekins
to advocate the release of pre-competitive pharmaceutical data to the community. He has also participated in the analysis and review of open pharmaceutical data released to the community.,
called Science Mobile Applications launched June 21, 2011. Initially this grew out of a desire to track chemistry Apps (for a paper submitted) and then Apps for science in the chemistry classroom.
British people
The British are citizens of the United Kingdom, of the Isle of Man, any of the Channel Islands, or of any of the British overseas territories, and their descendants...
chemist
Chemist
A chemist is a scientist trained in the study of chemistry. Chemists study the composition of matter and its properties such as density and acidity. Chemists carefully describe the properties they study in terms of quantities, with detail on the level of molecules and their component atoms...
and expert in the fields of both nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy and cheminformatics
Cheminformatics
Cheminformatics is the use of computer and informational techniques, applied to a range of problems in the field of chemistry. These in silico techniques are used in pharmaceutical companies in the process of drug discovery...
at the Royal Society of Chemistry
Royal Society of Chemistry
The Royal Society of Chemistry is a learned society in the United Kingdom with the goal of "advancing the chemical sciences." It was formed in 1980 from the merger of the Chemical Society, the Royal Institute of Chemistry, the Faraday Society and the Society for Analytical Chemistry with a new...
. He is the founder of the ChemSpider
ChemSpider
ChemsSpider is a free chemical database, owned by the Royal Society of Chemistry.-Database:The database contains more than 26 million unique molecules from over 400 data sources including those listed below.* A-L: EPA DSSTox, U.S...
website that was purchased by the Royal Society of Chemistry in May 2009. He is a science blogger, one of the hosts of the SciMobileApps wiki, a community-based wiki for Scientific Mobile Apps, and is a book author.,
Williams is married to Sharon, with whom he has twin boys, Taylor and Tyler.
Early life and education
Antony Williams was born in St AsaphSt Asaph
St Asaph is a town and community on the River Elwy in Denbighshire, Wales. In the 2001 Census it had a population of 3,491.The town of St Asaph is surrounded by countryside and views of the Vale of Clwyd. It is situated close to a number of busy coastal towns such as Rhyl, Prestatyn, Abergele,...
, Wales
Wales
Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It has a population of three million, and a total area of 20,779 km²...
, June 1964 to Ernest Edward Williams, owner of a building contracting firm, and Eirlys Elizabeth Williams. He has one older sister, Rae. He grew up in a small village near Caerwys
Caerwys
Caerwys is a town in Flintshire, Wales. It is situated just under two miles from the A55 North Wales Expressway and one mile from the A541 Mold-Denbigh road. At the 2001 Census, the population of Caerwys civil parish was 1,315, with a total ward population of 2,496.Caerwys is mentioned in the...
.
Williams attended Primary School in both Holywell
Holywell
Holywell is the fifth largest town in Flintshire, North Wales, lying to the west of the estuary of the River Dee.-History:The market town of Holywell takes its name from the St Winefride's Well, a holy well surrounded by a chapel...
and Nannerch
Nannerch
Nannerch is a village in Flintshire, north-east Wales. It is situated in an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. At the 2001 Census the population of Nannerch was 531.-History:...
until 1975. From the age of eleven, he attended Alun School
Alun School
The Alun School is a large secondary school serving the community of Mold, Flintshire, North Wales, and its surrounding villages. It is part of the Flintshire LEA...
where he received A-levels in mathematics
Mathematics
Mathematics is the study of quantity, space, structure, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns and formulate new conjectures. Mathematicians resolve the truth or falsity of conjectures by mathematical proofs, which are arguments sufficient to convince other mathematicians of their validity...
, geography
Geography
Geography is the science that studies the lands, features, inhabitants, and phenomena of Earth. A literal translation would be "to describe or write about the Earth". The first person to use the word "geography" was Eratosthenes...
, and chemistry
Chemistry
Chemistry is the science of matter, especially its chemical reactions, but also its composition, structure and properties. Chemistry is concerned with atoms and their interactions with other atoms, and particularly with the properties of chemical bonds....
.
Williams earned his B.Sc. in chemistry
Chemistry
Chemistry is the science of matter, especially its chemical reactions, but also its composition, structure and properties. Chemistry is concerned with atoms and their interactions with other atoms, and particularly with the properties of chemical bonds....
from the University of Liverpool
University of Liverpool
The University of Liverpool is a teaching and research university in the city of Liverpool, England. It is a member of the Russell Group of large research-intensive universities and the N8 Group for research collaboration. Founded in 1881 , it is also one of the six original "red brick" civic...
, in 1985, writing an undergraduate dissertation on “Spectroscopic Studies of Vitamin E
Vitamin E
Vitamin E is used to refer to a group of fat-soluble compounds that include both tocopherols and tocotrienols. There are many different forms of vitamin E, of which γ-tocopherol is the most common in the North American diet. γ-Tocopherol can be found in corn oil, soybean oil, margarine and dressings...
Related Systems” where he applied both electron paramagnetic resonance
Electron paramagnetic resonance
Electron paramagnetic resonance or electron spin resonance spectroscopyis a technique for studying chemical species that have one or more unpaired electrons, such as organic and inorganic free radicals or inorganic complexes possessing a transition metal ion...
(EPR) and NMR
NMR
NMR may refer to:Applications of Nuclear Magnetic Resonance:* Nuclear magnetic resonance* NMR spectroscopy* Solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance* Protein nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy* Proton NMR* Carbon-13 NMR...
to the study of molecules similar in structure to Vitamin E.
Williams earned his Ph.D. in chemistry, funded by Royal Dutch Shell
Royal Dutch Shell
Royal Dutch Shell plc , commonly known as Shell, is a global oil and gas company headquartered in The Hague, Netherlands and with its registered office in London, United Kingdom. It is the fifth-largest company in the world according to a composite measure by Forbes magazine and one of the six...
, from Royal Holloway in 1988 and wrote a thesis entitled "High Pressure NMR
NMR
NMR may refer to:Applications of Nuclear Magnetic Resonance:* Nuclear magnetic resonance* NMR spectroscopy* Solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance* Protein nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy* Proton NMR* Carbon-13 NMR...
of Lubricant
Lubricant
A lubricant is a substance introduced to reduce friction between moving surfaces. It may also have the function of transporting foreign particles and of distributing heat...
Related Systems". He won the Bourne Medal from the University of London for this work and developed a unifying theory for modeling NMR relaxation data to examine the molecular motions of alkyl chains. He also used the Cobalt-59 NMR chemical shift for cobalt (III) hexacyanide as both a temperature and pressure probe. During his PhD he developed an interest in personal computers and wrote software programs to fit NMR relaxation data.
Williams continued his work in spectroscopy at the National Research Council (Canada) using EPR spectroscopy to perform single-crystal studies of organometallics compounds.
Career
In 1991, Williams joined Ottawa UniversityOttawa University
Ottawa University is a private, non-profit, faith-based liberal arts college located in Ottawa, Kansas. It was founded in 1865 and is affiliated with the American Baptist Churches USA...
as their NMR Facility Manager. He continued his personal interests in multinuclear NMR to perform 2D-NMR experiments examining Selenium exchange in mixed-halogen systems. He also performed Silicon-29 and Tellurium-125 NMR studies.
In 1992 he left Canada for Rochester, NY to work for the Eastman Kodak Company as their NMR Technology Leader. At Kodak he used his previous experience in studying alkyl chain related systems to study micelles. He was involved in the early adoption of Liquid Chromatography-NMR into the company and in the development of an Open Access laboratory for chemists to use roboticized analytical instrumentation to generate data. At Kodak he was part of a three member team that developed a web-based LIMS system called WIMS, the Web-based Information Management System and it was the first web-based LIMS system in the world to manage chemical structures and spectral data. He was granted two patents while at Kodak.,
In 1997 he started work for a Canadian start-up company, Advanced Chemistry Development
Advanced Chemistry Development
ACD/Labs Advanced Chemistry Development, Inc., develops desktop and enterprise software solutions for chemical, biochemical, and pharmaceutical research and development.-Areas of expertise:...
,(ACD/Labs), as their senior product manager. He was responsible for managing all spectroscopy
Spectroscopy
Spectroscopy is the study of the interaction between matter and radiated energy. Historically, spectroscopy originated through the study of visible light dispersed according to its wavelength, e.g., by a prism. Later the concept was expanded greatly to comprise any interaction with radiative...
, structure drawing and IUPAC nomenclature
IUPAC nomenclature
A chemical nomenclature is a set of rules to generate systematic names for chemical compounds. The nomenclature used most frequently worldwide is the one created and developed by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry ....
, products. While in that role the analytical data management software was expanded to include support for mass spectrometry
Mass spectrometry
Mass spectrometry is an analytical technique that measures the mass-to-charge ratio of charged particles.It is used for determining masses of particles, for determining the elemental composition of a sample or molecule, and for elucidating the chemical structures of molecules, such as peptides and...
, infrared spectroscopy
Infrared spectroscopy
Infrared spectroscopy is the spectroscopy that deals with the infrared region of the electromagnetic spectrum, that is light with a longer wavelength and lower frequency than visible light. It covers a range of techniques, mostly based on absorption spectroscopy. As with all spectroscopic...
, UV-Vis spectroscopy, chromatography
Chromatography
Chromatography is the collective term for a set of laboratory techniques for the separation of mixtures....
and other forms of analytical sciences. His research interests at that time include the development of algorithms for NMR prediction ( and ) and, specifically, development of software approaches to Computer-Assisted Structure Elucidation, so-called CASE systems.,,,,. The CASE tools have been used for the purpose of structure revision whereby algorithms have been demonstrated to outperform human interpretation of spectral data.
While at ACD/Labs Williams was involved in a number of industry firsts including 1) producing a chemical dictionary on a Palm Computer and Pocket PC, 2) working with Gary E. Martin
Gary E. Martin
Gary Martin is an American chemist and expert in the fields of both NMR spectroscopy and medicinal chemistry. He is a distinguished fellow at the Merck Research Laboratories. He is also a photographer specializing in the capture of images of lighthouses, especially under conditions of extreme...
and other colleagues to develop new NMR processing techniques using covariance
Covariance
In probability theory and statistics, covariance is a measure of how much two variables change together. Variance is a special case of the covariance when the two variables are identical.- Definition :...
-based approaches, 3) the introduction of fuzzy-logic based approaches to computer-assisted structure elucidation and 4) Approaches for automated structure verification.
While at the company he initiated a hobby project to link together chemistry databases on the web. This project was called ChemSpider
ChemSpider
ChemsSpider is a free chemical database, owned by the Royal Society of Chemistry.-Database:The database contains more than 26 million unique molecules from over 400 data sources including those listed below.* A-L: EPA DSSTox, U.S...
. ChemSpider was formally announced at the Chicago ACS meeting in March 2007 with a database containing over 10 million compounds sourced from PubChem
PubChem
PubChem is a database of chemical molecules and their activities against biological assays. The system is maintained by the National Center for Biotechnology Information , a component of the National Library of Medicine, which is part of the United States National Institutes of Health . PubChem can...
.
In 2007 when he left ACD/Labs he was the Chief Science Officer. He became an independent consultant working with a number of software companies in the cheminformatics domain, such as SimBioSys
Simbiosys
SimBioSys is a Toronto based chemistry software company focusing on structure based drug discovery and retrosynthetic analysis tools...
, and with research organizations to support their cheminformatics efforts. In parallel he continued to develop the ChemSpider platform with a small group of like-minded individuals interested in the development of web-based systems to serve chemists., The site is a crowdsourced community for chemistry with chemists depositing their structure collections, spectral data and molecular properties. Williams is focused on educating the community as to the issues of data quality associated with internet chemistry databases.,
In May 2009 the Royal Society of Chemistry
Royal Society of Chemistry
The Royal Society of Chemistry is a learned society in the United Kingdom with the goal of "advancing the chemical sciences." It was formed in 1980 from the merger of the Chemical Society, the Royal Institute of Chemistry, the Faraday Society and the Society for Analytical Chemistry with a new...
announced that it had acquired ChemSpider. Williams joined RSC as their Vice President of Strategic Development for ChemSpider.
Williams has contributed to the world of “Mobile Chemistry” by contributing to the development of ChemMobi, an iPhone
IPhone
The iPhone is a line of Internet and multimedia-enabled smartphones marketed by Apple Inc. The first iPhone was unveiled by Steve Jobs, then CEO of Apple, on January 9, 2007, and released on June 29, 2007...
app for accessing millions of chemical compounds and associated data.
Williams is an advocate for Open Notebook Science
Open Notebook Science
Open Notebook Science is the practice of making the entire primary record of a research project publicly available online as it is recorded. This involves placing the personal, or laboratory, notebook of the researcher online along with all raw and processed data, and any associated material, as...
and is a judge for the Open Notebook Science Challenge
Open Notebook Science Challenge
The Open Notebook Science Challenge is a crowdsourcing research project which collects measurements of the non-aqueous solubility of organic compounds and publishes these as open data; findings are reported in an open notebook science manner...
. He has worked with Andrew S.I.D. Lang
Andrew S.I.D. Lang
Andrew Stuart Ian Donald Lang, PNF, FDI is a British mathematical physicist and Professor of Mathematics at Oral Roberts University. He has received a number of awards, including being named a 2010 DaVinci Institute Fellow for his groundbreaking work in virtual worlds...
and Jean-Claude Bradley to deliver a web-based game for teaching the interpretation of spectral data utilizing crowdsourced spectroscopy data deposited onto ChemSpider
ChemSpider
ChemsSpider is a free chemical database, owned by the Royal Society of Chemistry.-Database:The database contains more than 26 million unique molecules from over 400 data sources including those listed below.* A-L: EPA DSSTox, U.S...
.
Open science advocacy
Williams introduced an Open Access journal, the ChemSpider Journal of Chemistry, and the development team provided novel online markup technology (ChemMANTIS – Markup And Nomenclature Transformation Integrated System) to allow crowdsourced markup of chemistry related terms linked up, where possible, to the ChemSpider database. Williams is a judge for the Open Notebook Science ChallengeOpen Notebook Science Challenge
The Open Notebook Science Challenge is a crowdsourcing research project which collects measurements of the non-aqueous solubility of organic compounds and publishes these as open data; findings are reported in an open notebook science manner...
. He promotes the use of Open Data
Open Data
Open data is the idea that certain data should be freely available to everyone to use and republish as they wish, without restrictions from copyright, patents or other mechanisms of control. The goals of the open data movement are similar to those of other "Open" movements such as open source, open...
, particularly spectral data, publishes in Open Access journals and is an advocate for Open Notebook Science
Open Notebook Science
Open Notebook Science is the practice of making the entire primary record of a research project publicly available online as it is recorded. This involves placing the personal, or laboratory, notebook of the researcher online along with all raw and processed data, and any associated material, as...
. Williams is an advocate for freeing pre-clinical data from the pharmaceutical industry on the internet.,, Williams has worked closely with Sean Ekins
Sean Ekins
Sean Ekins is a British pharmacologist and expert in the fields of ADME/Tox, computational toxicology and cheminformatics at Collaborations in Chemistry, a division of corporate communications firm Collaborations in Communications...
to advocate the release of pre-competitive pharmaceutical data to the community. He has also participated in the analysis and review of open pharmaceutical data released to the community.,
Science Mobile Applications
Williams co-developed a Wiki with Sean EkinsSean Ekins
Sean Ekins is a British pharmacologist and expert in the fields of ADME/Tox, computational toxicology and cheminformatics at Collaborations in Chemistry, a division of corporate communications firm Collaborations in Communications...
called Science Mobile Applications launched June 21, 2011. Initially this grew out of a desire to track chemistry Apps (for a paper submitted) and then Apps for science in the chemistry classroom.