Chad Williams

Computational Transportation Science
University of Illinois, Chicago


Chad is a 2nd year PhD student in the department of Computer Science at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). His primary research interest is in artificial intelligence specifically applying machine learning and data mining techniques to practical applications. He received his B.S. from Cornell University in 1998, and his M.S. from DePaul University in 2006.

His current research focuses on applying data mining techniques combined with reinforcement learning to enable real-time travel prediction and tour scheduling for individuals. The goal of this work is to enable intelligent travel applications by providing insight into individual's future travel plans and scheduling preferences. A major goal of this work is to provide this insight without compromising user privacy by not requiring the user to divulge their travel history. His advisors are Dr. Peter Nelson (Computer Science) and Dr. Abolfazl (Kouros) Mohammadian (Civil and Materials Engineering).

During his masters research with Dr. Bamshad Mobasher, he examined techniques for securing recommender systems. This project focused on identifying weaknesses of existing recommendation algorithms, exploring more robust recommendation techniques, and limiting the impact of malicious attacks. Prior to his graduate studies, Chad was an IT consultant for 7 years for several Fortune 500 companies in the financial and insurance sectors.

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