CMU alumnus Nathan Williams returns to CMU-Africa
Lynn Michelangelo
Jan 30, 2026
Just weeks after earning his bachelor's degree in physics and mathematics from Whitworth University in Spokane, Washington (United States), Nathan Williams was on his way to Burkina Faso in West Africa.
As a volunteer with the Peace Corps there, Williams taught math and science in a small village that had neither electricity nor running water. He began playing with solar panels that he used to bring power to his students and friends.
"You gain an appreciation for even small amounts of electricity when you live without it," said Williams who has gone on to build a career that allows him to teach and conduct research that is powering the continent that he is once again calling home.
Williams recently joined Carnegie Mellon University Africa as an associate teaching professor.
After serving in the Peace Corps, Williams earned his master’s degree from Nelson Mandela University in South Africa and worked as a project manager for a South African energy company.
Williams and his wife, a South African native, have four children.
He then returned to the U.S, where he earned his Ph.D. in Engineering and Public Policy in 2017 and spent time teaching and conducting research at Carnegie Mellon University in both Pittsburgh and Kigali. He spent the past six years serving as an assistant professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT).
He is thrilled to be once again working at CMU-Africa, a place he says where incredible things happen and fantastic students work.
He will be teaching two courses this spring—one in Energy Systems Modeling and a Policy Making and Analysis course. Thanks to his former work at CMU-Africa, he has already been able to recruit several former students to be guest lecturers.
He says CMU-Africa graduates often hold senior positions in government and industry in Africa, which makes them particularly well-suited to help students understand the cultural and economic policy challenges that can oftentimes be more difficult than the technology challenges they will encounter.
His research efforts will include several projects including one with GIZ (Gesellchaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit), a German development agency that is promoting the use of electric cooking by those who are currently using less clean energy sources such as charcoal.
He will also be studying Nigerian cooperative models that can bring power to remote areas in the form of village-scale mini-grids, which can be more effective than running power lines long distances to outlying locations.
Williams and his family are excited to once again call Africa home.
And he will continue work he had done at RIT to study electricity consumption in areas where investments to bring power to remote areas which have not yet reached the rates of user consumption that can spur economic development and improve the lives of residents.
He is also interested in helping to build an energy research hub in Rwanda that can provide practical and purpose-driven solutions to energy-related challenges by stakeholders and researchers in Africa. The hubs can also support training for the data scientists who are needed to support the utility industry that relies upon such resources from the academic community.
Williams' desire to help secure the energy future of Africa is personal as well as professional. He and his wife, a South African native, have four children. Three of their children were adopted in 2019 after Williams' sister-in-law, their mother, passed away. The family, which now also includes a three-year old, is once again calling Africa home, and Williams is excited to be a part of its energy future.