Dr. Cranos Williams

Dr. Cranos Williams

Goodnight Distinguished Professor of Agricultural Analytics
Data-Driven Plant Sciences Platform Director, N.C. Plant Sciences Initiative

For general inquires or scheduling a meeting with Dr. Williams, please contact Alex Goodnight (avgoodni@ncsu.edu).


Dr. Cranos Williams is a Goodnight Distinguished Professor with joint appointments in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (College of Engineering) and the Department of Plant and Microbial Biology (College of Agriculture and Life Sciences). He also serves as the Platform Director of Data-Driven Plant Science within the N.C. Plant Sciences Initiative. He received his B.S. in Electrical Engineering from North Carolina A&T State University in 2001, and his M.S. and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from North Carolina State University in 2002 and 2008, respectively.  Williams then became an assistant professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering department at NC State University.

Since joining the faculty in 2008, Williams has built an internationally recognized research program in Plant Systems Biology and Engineering (PSB/E) and has led inter-institutional collaborations to advance next-generation sustainable agricultural technology solutions. He is the director of the EnBiSys (Engineering Computational Methodologies for Multi-hierarchical Biological Systems) Research Laboratory, which focuses on the development of computational and analytical solutions for modeling and understanding biological systems, such as the molecular processes that impact plant growth, development, and adaptation. His research lab develops methodologies familiar to other areas of electrical and computer engineering (e.g. computational intelligence, system identification, nonlinear systems analysis and control, and signal processing) to model and predict the impact that genetic and environmental perturbations have on overall plant response.

Williams is a senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.  He was awarded the Alcoa Foundation Research Achievement Award in 2019, the Alumni Associated Outstanding Research Award in 2021, and was inducted into the Research Leadership Academy in 2021.  In 2019, he was selected to attend the National Academy of Engineering 2019 Frontiers of Engineering Symposium.