Ryan Williams (computer scientist)

Richard Ryan Williams
Ryan Williams (November 2010)
Born	1979 (age 37–38)
Residence	USA
Nationality	American
Fields	Computational complexity theory, Algorithms
Institutions	Carnegie Mellon University IBM Almaden Research Center Stanford University
Alma mater	Cornell University Carnegie Mellon University
Doctoral advisor	Manuel Blum

Richard Ryan Williams, known as Ryan Williams (born 1979), is an American computer scientist working in computational complexity theory.

Williams received his Ph.D in computer science in 2007 from Carnegie Mellon University under the supervision of Manuel Blum. From 2010 to 2012, he was a member of the Theory Group of IBM Almaden Research Center. Since Fall 2011, he is a professor at Stanford University.

Williams has been a member of the programme committee for the Symposium on Theory of Computing in 2011 and various other conferences. He won the Ron V. Book best student paper award at the IEEE Conference on Computational Complexity in 2005 and 2007, and at the best student paper award at the International Colloquium on Automata, Languages and Programming in 2004 from the European Association for Theoretical Computer Science.

Williams’s result that the complexity class NEXP is not contained in ACC⁰ received the best paper award at the Conference on Computational Complexity in 2011. Complexity theorist Scott Aaronson has called the result "one of the most spectacular of the decade".

Williams is also an expert on the computational complexity of k-anonymity.