Antony Williams
= Builder, innovator and creator of key tool of Open Science, [ChemSpider]. Master of building basic platforms of Open Science and standard science and adroit and effective leader of outreach to mainstream scientific societies and organizations.
Self Assessment
"I’d define myself as an Idea Guy with a try-it-and-see mentality. I’ve worked in government labs, in academia, in Fortune 500 corporate America, in small start-up transitioned to established presence. I now work for a British publisher and have owned two of my own companies. There is a place for ideas in all places of course but the smaller the organization the more likely it is that you can run in many directions trying out various things. In our domain that only holds true if it requires sweat and intellect and not capital investments. So much was possible with ChemSpider because the platform was cheap and the investment was intellectual sweat. I still like to try out many ideas in parallel if they have low time investments. Some of the greatest pay-off projects I’ve ever been involved with come from such investigations. There are others who I judge work in a similar way and getting a lot done with minimal resources…Andy Lang, Rich Apodaca and Egon Willighagen among them.
ChemSpider wasn’t built just by me. There was a key group of individuals who worked very hard on the platform. I love being part of a highly effective team who knuckle down and progress projects. My role is definitely one of hands-across-the-seas trying to navigate the complexities of multiple opinions, stances and needs to deliver benefits to the community at large and the organizations involved. It is hard enough to establish win-win in some cases and gets very complex when there are many parties involved. But the challenge is what makes it stimulating and I rarely back down easily and stand for what’s right.
Despite my recent roles that have been more business oriented I still think of myself as a scientist and try to keep my hand into NMR though it’s limited today to software algorithms for NMR prediction and computer assisted structure elucidation. There’s a list of my papers on Mendeley and a couple of new ones in preparation now. I am fortunate that I have remained engaged with ACD/Labs at a technical level and get to work with some of the best intellect in the world in terms of NMR prediction and structure elucidation algorithms. I believe that to improve it is best to surround myself with people I can learn from and that invigorates my grey matter!" (http://www.altsearchengines.com/2010/01/10/a-talk-with-antony-williams-of-chemspider/)