William L. Wilson

William L. Wilson serves as the Executive Director of the Center for Nanoscale Systems at Harvard University. He graduated from Saint Joseph’s University in 1982 with a BSc. degree in Chemistry and went on to study Physical Chemistry at Stanford University as a AT&T Bell Laboratories Cooperative Research Fellow (CRFP), and as an NSF Graduate Fellow, receiving his Ph.D. degree in 1988.

Wilson became a member of technical staff in the Physical Chemistry Research Department at AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, NJ in 1987, and was part of the team that elucidated the fundamental properties of Quantum Dots. (This work awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2023.) Wilson was promoted to Distinguished Member of Technical Staff in 1998 as a member of the Optical Materials Research Department.

In 2001, Wilson became a founder and Chief Science Officer of InPhase Technologies, Longmont, Colorado, A spinoff company from Bell Laboratories developing High-performance data storage materials and systems, and served in that role until 2009. In 2009, He moved to academia, serving as Associate Research Professor in Material Science and Engineering and the Associate Director of the Integrated Imaging Center at John’s Hopkins University. In 2011, Bill moved to the Faculty of the Materials Science and Engineering Department and the Directorship of the Central Research Facilities of the Frederick Seitz Materials Research Laboratory (MRL) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In 2015, Dr. Wilson accepted the Executive Directorship at the Center for Nanoscale Systems at Harvard University and a lectureship appointment in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology. At Harvard, Dr. Wilson’s research has focused on Nanoscale Spectroscopy and Microscopy on a wide array of Quantum Materials. Dr. Wilson has published more than 150 papers, co-authored a book on Holographic Data Storage, and has been granted more than 35 US and International Patents.