The following announcement was shared with the Northeastern University community by Tom Sheahan, Interim Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs, on June 11, 2026.
Mark C. Williams, Professor and Chair of the Department of Physics, has been appointed Dean of the College of Science, effective July 1, 2026.
Mark brings to this role a record that is both impressive in scope and grounded in practice. As Chair of the Physics Department since 2017, he led a remarkable transformation: faculty nearly doubled from 36 to 67, annual grant funding nearly doubled, and the department’s combined financial portfolio grew substantially. Central to that growth was his work with faculty to establish the Quantum Materials and Sensing Institute at Northeastern’s Burlington campus, which attracted new faculty and funding from the Department of Energy and defense agencies.
He also supported the early integration of AI into theoretical physics research, helping secure resources that positioned a Northeastern physics faculty member as a founding principal investigator of the NSF Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Fundamental Interactions. That grant totaled $20 million and was subsequently renewed at $25 million. Under his leadership, the department expanded its faculty in the Network Science Institute and recruited its first member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. That hire anchored the new Center for Theoretical Biological Physics and brought part of an NSF Physics Frontier Center to Northeastern, significantly strengthening the department’s biophysics program.
Mark is also a scholar of considerable standing. As director of the Williams Laboratory for Single Molecule Biophysics, he develops methods to study the behavior of DNA and RNA at the molecular level and how they interact with proteins. This research has direct implications for understanding viral diseases, including HIV. He has received an NSF CAREER Award, was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society, has published more than 120 papers, and earned over 7,500 citations, reflecting both the depth and durability of his research program. He has also personally mentored 17 doctoral students to PhD completion and 30 undergraduate researchers. Mark’s appointment reflects both the strength of the College of Science and the depth of talent within our own community.
