Roy David Williams
roy at roe.ac.uk
My work now focuses on providing people with meaningful access to scientific and technical data, as well as learning from, making decisions from, and preserving that data.
My career began with a degree in mathematics from Cambridge, then a PhD in nuclear physics and mathematical physics at Caltech. I was proud to work with Nobel-prizewinner Willy Fowler (paper), and I think my co-workers and I were first to work on nuclear pasta (paper).
I worked in physics a few more years, then worked with the new architecture computers, rebuilding scientific simulation codes for parallel machines, and making new codes with unstructured meshes and dynamic load balancing (see 1993 below). I was co-author of a book Parallel Computing Works!. There was a lot of fluid-flow simulation on parallel computers, inculuding a simulation of the hypersonic flow around the Huygens space probe that landed on Saturn's moon Titan (paper).
The world-wide web arrived in the early 1990's, where I was an early adopter. In 1995, I gave a lecture and wrote an article about its potential. I was building web applications in 1996, delivering Earth remote-sensing data over the internet, where I wrote about what I called Hypermaps, a prequel to Google Maps.
I worked with the LIGO (gravitational waves) project in the late 1990's, introducing them to databases and XML, and built science gateways for the US Teragrid project. I was with the Virtual Observatory from the start, as architect, also creating in large part the VOTable and VOEvent standards, now widely used. There was a lot of work on astronomical transients, leading up to the Palomar Transient Factory and preliminary work on LSST, realizing that soon the transient detections would overwhelm the ability of telescopes to observe them all. I worked again for the LIGO group from 2010, developing the Gravitational Wave Open Science Center. I was lucky enough to be at Caltech when the first detection happened, with all its excitement, and I wrote this account of LIGO is Awesome and This is Why.
In June 2017 I moved to Edinburgh, where I work at the Royal Observatory, where I work in preparation for the flood of transient observations from the LSST telescope, due to be on sky in 2020. There are expected to be millions of transient observations per night, and we are preparing by building a prototype called Lasair at lasair.lsst.ac.uk.
Edinburgh is a great place to live. I am enjoying spending a day each week at the Edinburgh Tool Library in Colinton, and listening to the wind blowing outside my office window at the Observatory. Also starting to do a bit of writing.
 | Paintings 2019 and beyond |
 | Stellations of the Icosahedron |
 | Furniture |
 | Stained glass |
 | Javascript games. |
 | Useless information about Pi |
 | Xmorphia: beautiful equations |
 | Paintings of Vermeer: ancient pages from 1995 |
 | Greatstreets: 47 city street plans to scale |
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Lasair The Movie (video) Roy Williams Click for youtube. |
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Enabling Science from the Rubin Alert Stream with Lasair Roy D. Williams, Gareth P. Francis, Andy Lawrence, Terence M. Sloan, Stephen J. Smartt, Ken W. Smith, David R. Young Click for published paper or for arxiv preprint. |
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NEural Engine for Discovering Luminous Events (NEEDLE): identifying rare transient candidates in real time from host galaxy images X. Sheng et. al. Click for arxiv. |
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GW190425: Pan-STARRS and ATLAS coverage of the skymap and limits on optical emission associated with FRB190425 S. J. Smartt et. al. Click for arxiv. |
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Fitting Early light curves of Explosive Astrophysics R. D. Williams Click for pdf. |
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Open data from the first and second observing runs of Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo
Abbott et. al. (LIGO collaboration) submitted to Nature Scientific Data Click for Arxiv and pdf. |
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Lasair: The Transient Alert Broker for LSST:UK
Ken Smith, Roy D. Williams, D. R. Young, A. Ibsen, S. J. Smartt, A. Lawrence, D. Morris, S. Voutsinas, and M. Nicholl Research Notes of the AAS, Volume 3, Number 1 Click here. |
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GW170817: Observation of Gravitational Waves from a Binary Neutron Star Inspiral LIGO Scientific Consortium Phys. Rev. Lett. 119, 161101. |
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Observation of Gravitational Waves from a Binary Black Hole Merger LIGO Scientific Consortium Phys. Rev. Lett. 116, 061102 |
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LIGO Open Science Center: data releases from the LIGO project.
http://losc.ligo.org. 2013 - present. |
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LIGO Data Management Plan
Stuart Anderson and Roy Williams, 2013 Click here. |
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Responding to the Event Deluge
Roy D. Williams, Scott D. Barthelmy, Robert B. Denny, Matthew J. Graham, John Swinbank Proceedings of SPIE Observatory Operations, Amsterdam, 2012 Click here. |
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Community Input for LIGO Open Data
edited by Roy Williams, Christian Ott, Steve Groom, 2012 Click here. |
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Astronomy with Cutting-Edge ICT: From Transients in the Sky to Data over the Continents (India-US)
Ashish Mahabal, Ajit Kembhavi, Roy Williams and Sharmad Navelkar Click here. |
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Gravitational Waves and Time-Domain Astronomy
Joan Centrella, Samaya Nissanke and Roy Williams Proceedings of the International Astronomical Union / Volume 7 / Symposium S285 / September 2011, pp 191-198 Click here. |
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Using the VO to Study the Time Domain
Rob Seaman, Roy Williams, Matthew Graham and Tara Murphy Proceedings of the International Astronomical Union / Volume 7 / Symposium S285 / September 2011, pp 221 - 226 Click here. |
 | Skyalert: authoring, dissemination, annotating, mining, and messaging of immediate astronomical events. 2009 - 2013. |
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Sky Event Reporting Metadata (VOEvent) R. Seaman, R.D. Williams, A. Allan, S. Barthelmy, J. Bloom, M. Graham, F. Hessman, S. Marka, A. Rots, C. Stoughton, T. Vestrand, R. White, P. Wozniak, A Recommendation of the International Virtual Observatory Alliance, 2006. HTML |
First Results from the Catalina Real-time Transient Survey
A.J. Drake, S.G. Djorgovski, A. Mahabal, E. Beshore, S. Larson, M.J. Graham, R. Williams, E. Christensen, M. Catelan, A. Boattini, A. Gibbs, R. Hill, R. Kowalski, Astrophysical J. 696 (2009) 870.
PDF
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National Virtual Observatory Summer School 2008 Roy Williams, Faculty Chair Organized the content and teaching for a two-week intensive course on the Virtual Observatory, September 2008, Santa Fe, New Mexico. |
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VIM: Visual Integration and Mining Integrate data from multiple positions and datasets. |
Skyalert: Real-time Astronomy for You and Your Robots
R. D. Williams, S. G. Djorgovski, A. J. Drake, M. J. Graham, A. Mahabal.
Proc. ADASS XVIII (2008), PASP, eds. D. Bohlender, P. Dowler and D. Durand
link
Describing Data and Data Collections in the VO
Kent, B.R.; Hanisch, R.J.; Williams, R.D.
in The National Virtual Observatory: Tools and Techniques for Astronomical Research, eds. Graham M.J., Fitzpatrick M.F., McGlynn T.A. ASP Conference Proceedings, vol. 382.
PDF
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Data-Intensive Computing in the 21st Century
Ian Gorton, Paul Greenfield, Alex Szalay, Roy Williams Computer 05/2008; DOI:10.1109/MC.2008.122 Click here. |
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The IVOA in 2007: Assessment and Future Roadmap Roy Williams and the IVOA Technical Coordination Group International Virtual Observatory Alliance, PDF |
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Google Sky mashup Roy Williams and Andrew Drake Real-time display of events from multiple streams. 2007. (bring up the Google Earth/Sky client, click Current Sky Events and VOEventNet)., or click here. |
Object detection in multi-epoch data
G. Jogesh Babu, Ashish Mahabal, S. G. Djorgovski, R. Williams
Statistical Methodology, Volume 5, Issue 4, p. 299-306.
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The IVOA in 2006: Assessment and Future Roadmap Roy Williams and the IVOA Technical Coordination Group International Virtual Observatory Alliance, PDF. |
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The IVOA in 2005: Assessment and Future Roadmap Roy Williams and the IVOA Technical Coordination Group International Virtual Observatory Alliance, PDF |
Virtual Observatory: From Concept to Implementation
S. G. Djorgovski and R. Williams
In: Science with Wavelengths on Human Scales, ASPCS, vol. 3xx. ASPCS
PDF
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VOTable Format Definition Francois Ochsenbein, Roy Williams, Clive Davenhall, Daniel Durand, Pierre Fernique, David Giaretta, Robert Hanisch, Tom McGlynn, Alex Szalay, Mark B. Taylor, Andreas Wicenec, A Recommendation of the International Virtual Observatory Alliance. HTML |
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An IVOA Standard for Unified Content Descriptors S. Derriere, N. Gray, R. Mann, A. Preite Martinez, J. McDowell, T. Mc Glynn, F. Ochsenbein, P. Osuna, G. Rixon, R.D. Williams. A Recommendation of the International Virtual Observatory Alliance. HTML |
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Grids and the Virtual Observatory Roy Williams in Grid Computing: Making The Global Infrastructure a Reality by Fran Berman, Anthony J.G. Hey, and Geoffrey Fox, Wiley, 2003, pp 837-858. PDF |
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Scientific Data Mining Integration and Visualization Bob Mann, Roy Williams, Malcolm Atkinson, Ken Brodlie, Amos Storkey, Chris Williams, report of a workshop held in Edinburgh, 24-25 October 2002. PDF |
XML and Web Services for Astronomers
Roy Williams and Robert Brunner
tutorial at ADASS 2002, Baltimore, October 2002.
PPT
Network data analysis server (NDAS) prototype development
Szabi Marka, Benoit Mours, Roy Williams
Classical and Quantum Gravity 19 (7): 1537-1540 (2002)
Agent based data management in digital libraries
Y.Y. Yang, O.F. Rana, D. W. Walker, R. D. Williams
Parallel Computing 28 (5): 773-792 (2002)
Web access to supercomputing
G. Aloisio, M. Cafaro, C. Kesselman, R. Williams
Computational Science and Engineering 3 (6): 66-72 (2001)
A Virtual Data Grid for LIGO
Ewa Deelman, Carl Kesselman, Roy Williams, Albert Lazzarini,
Thomas A. Prince, Joe Romano and Bruce Allen
Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 2110 (2001) pp 3-12
PDF
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Estimating the Error of Numerical Solutions of Systems of Nonlinear
Reaction-Diffusion Equations
The Formation, Structure, and Stability of a Shear Layer in a
Fluid with Temperature-Dependent Viscosity
D. J. Estep, S. M. Verduyn Lunel, and R. D. Williams
D. J. Estep, M. G. Larsen, and R. D. Williams |
Grid computing on the web using the globus toolkit
G. Aloisio G, M. Cafaro, P. Falabella, R. Williams
Lecture Notes in Computer Science 1823: 32-40 (2000)
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Approaches to Federation of Astronomical Data Roy Williams in Virtual Observatories of the Future, eds. R. J. Brunner, S. G. Djorgovski, and A. S. Szalay, Astronomical Society of the Pacific, Conference Series 225. November 2000. PDF |
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The Digital Puglia Project: An active digital library of remote sensing data G. Aloisio, M. Cafaro, R. Williams Lecture Notes in Computer Science 1593: 563-572 (1999) |
An XML Architecture for High-Performance Web-Based Analysis of
Remote-Sensing Archives
Giovanni Aloisio, Giovanni Milillo, and Roy Williams
Future Generation Computing Systems 16 (1): 91-100 NOV 1999.
PDF.
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Strategies for Parallel and Numerical Scalability of CFD Codes Ralf Winkelmann, Jochem Hauser and Roy Williams Computational Methods in Applied Mechanical Engineering. 174 (3-4): 433-456 (1999). PDF (image shows Huygens craft, that landed on Titan Jan 2004) |
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A Pure Java Parallel Flow Solver Jochem Hauser, Thorsten Ludewig, Torsten Gollnick, Ralf Winkelmann, Roy Williams, Jean Muylaert, and Martin Spel AIAA paper 99-0549, proceedings of 37th Aerospace Sciences Meeting, Reno NV, Jan 1999. PDF. |
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XSIL: Extensible Scientific Interchange Language Kent Blackburn, Albert Lazzarini, Tom Prince and Roy Williams Lect. Notes. Comp. Sci. 1593 (1999) 513. |
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Report of the European Union - United States Workshop on Large Scientific
Databases Roy Williams, Paul Messina, Fabrizio Gagliardi, John Darlington, and Giovanni Aloisio October 1999 PDF. |
Interfaces to Scientific Data Archives
Report of the NSF Workshop
Roy Williams, Julian Bunn, Reagan Moore and James Pool,
May 1998. HTML .
Paraflow: A dataflow distributed data-computing system
Roy Williams and Bruce Sears
Lecture Notes in Computer Science 1401: 556-565 (1998)
Metacomputing - From ideas to real implementations
Wolfgang Nagel and Roy Williams
Parallel Computing 24 (12-13): 1709-1711 (1998)
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A Tangled Web Strategy for Numerical and Parallel Scalability in
Aerospace Simulation J. Haeuser, R. D. Williams and R. Winkelmann Proceedings of CFD97, University of Victoria, Canada, 25-27 May 1997. PDF. |
| Video: Letter R formed by evolution of non-uniform Gray-Scott model, 1999. Click here. |
Error Estimation for Numerical Differential Equations
D. J. Estep, S. M. Verduyn Lunel and R. D. Williams
IEEE Antennas and Propagation 38 (2): 71-76 (1996).
PDF
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Accurate Parallel Integration of Large Sparse Systems of Differential
Equations D. J. Estep and R. D. Williams Mathematical Models and Methods in Applied Sciences 6 (4): 535-568 (1996). PDF |
Efficient Convergence Acceleration for Parallel CFD Codes
R.D. Williams, J. Hauser and R. Winkelmann,
Proceedings of the Parallel CFD '96 conference, Capri, Italy
July 1996.
PDF
A Newton-GMRES Method for the Parallel Navier-Stokes Equations
J. Hauser, R.D. Williams, H.-G. Paap, M. Spel, J. Muylaert and R. Winkelmann
Proceedings of the Parallel CFD '95 conference, Pasadena, California
July 1995.
PDF
 | Parallel Computing Works! G. C. Fox, R. D. Williams and P. C. Messina, Morgan-Kaufmann, San Francisco, 1994 (available from Amazon) |
Voxel Databases: A Paradigm for Parallelism with Spatial Structure
R. D. Williams,
Concurrency, 4 (1992) 619. PDF
Performance of Dynamic Load Balancing Algorithms for Unstructured Mesh Calculations
R. D. Williams,
Concurrency, 3 (1991) 457.
PDF
Adaptive Parallel Meshes with Complex Geometry
C. F. Baillie, R. D. Williams, S. M. Catterall and D. A. Johnston
Nucl. Phys B348, 543 (1991)
Performance of Dynamic Load Balancing Algorithms for Unstructured Mesh Calculations
R. D. Williams,
Concurrency, 3, 457 (1991)
PDF users manual
Crumpling Transition in Dynamically Triangulated Random Surfaces
C. F. Baillie, R. D. Williams, D. A. Johnston
Nuclear Physics B 335 (2): 469-501 (1990)
Computational Aspects of Simulating Dynamically Triangulated Random Surfaces
C. F. Baillie, R. D. Williams, D. A. Johnston
Computer Physics Communications 58 (1-2): 105-117 (1990)
Supersonic Flow in Parallel with an Unstructured Mesh
R. D. Williams
Concurrency, 1, 51 (1989)
PDF.
1988
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Free-Lagrange Hydrodynamics in Parallel R. D. Williams Parallel Computing 7, 439 (1988) PDF. |
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Two Transitions in Tangentially Anchored Nematic Droplets R. D. Williams J. Phys. A19, 3211 (1986) PDF |
Critical Spin Dynamics of Europium Oxide
S. W. Lovesey and R. D. Williams
J. Phys. C19, L253 (1986)
PDF
Scattering Response of a Phonon Damped Harmonic Oscillator
R. D. Williams, S. W. Lovesey and W. Renz,
Z. Physik B64, 129 (1986)
PDF
Neutron Scattering from a Substitutional Mass Defect
R. D. Williams and S. W. Lovesey
Z. Physik B62, 413 (1986)
PDF
Bound-State Decay of Rhenium-187
R. D. Williams, W. A. Fowler and S. E. Koonin,
Astrophys. J. 281, 363 (1984)
PDF
The Coupling of Phonons to a Helium Atom Adsorbed on Graphite
R. D. Williams, M. W. Cole and S. E. Koonin,
Phys. Rev. B28, 1076 (1983)
Atomic Final-State Interactions in Tritium Decay
R. D. Williams and S. E. Koonin,
Phys. Rev. C27, 1815 (1983)
PDF
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Semiclassical Quantization of the Shell Model R. D. Williams and S. E. Koonin, Nucl. Phys. A391, 79 (1982) PDF |