Robert C. “Bob” Williamson is a professor in the research school of computer science at the Australian National University. Until 2017 he was chief scientist of DATA61 where he was responsible for the science vision. He was instrumental in creating NICTA, serving as Canberra laboratory director, machine learning group leader, scientific director, and CEO. He lead the writing of a report for the Chief Scientist of Australia on new technologies and their impacts. His research is focussed on three broad areas of machine learning: compositional theoretical foundations, including several recent works on fast rates in learning and the structure of loss functions and measures of information; architectural issues of large machine learning systems, and social aspects of machine learning, most recently focussing on questions of fairness. He is a fellow of the Australian Academy of Science and the Australian Mathematical Society.