Ronald J. Williams (1945 in California – February 16, 2024 in Framingham Massachusetts) was professor of

computer science Computer science is the study of computation, information, and automation. Computer science spans Theoretical computer science, theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, and information theory) to Applied science, ...

Northeastern University Northeastern University (NU or NEU) is a private university, private research university with its main campus in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. It was founded by the Boston Young Men's Christian Association in 1898 as an all-male instit ...

, and one of the pioneers of

neural networks A neural network is a group of interconnected units called neurons that send signals to one another. Neurons can be either Cell (biology), biological cells or signal pathways. While individual neurons are simple, many of them together in a netwo ...

. He co-authored a paper on the

backpropagation In machine learning, backpropagation is a gradient computation method commonly used for training a neural network to compute its parameter updates. It is an efficient application of the chain rule to neural networks. Backpropagation computes th ...

algorithm which triggered a boom in neural network research. He also made fundamental contributions to the fields of

recurrent neural networks Recurrent neural networks (RNNs) are a class of artificial neural networks designed for processing sequential data, such as text, speech, and time series, where the order of elements is important. Unlike feedforward neural networks, which proces ...

and

reinforcement learning Reinforcement learning (RL) is an interdisciplinary area of machine learning and optimal control concerned with how an intelligent agent should take actions in a dynamic environment in order to maximize a reward signal. Reinforcement learnin ...

. Together with Wenxu Tong and Mary Jo Ondrechen he developed Partial Order Optimum Likelihood (POOL), a machine learning method used in the prediction of active amino acids in protein structures. POOL is a maximum likelihood method with a monotonicity constraint and is a general predictor of properties that depend monotonically on the input features.W. Tong, Y. Wei, L.F. Murga, M.J. Ondrechen, and R.J. Williams (2009). Partial Order Optimum Likelihood (POOL): Maximum Likelihood Prediction of Active Site Residues Using 3D Structure and Sequence Properties. PLoS Computational Biology, 5(1): e1000266.

References

External links

Home page of Ronald J. Williams
{{DEFAULTSORT:Williams, Ronald J. American computer scientists Northeastern University faculty Scientists from Boston Living people Year of birth missing (living people)