By Zack Sampson, News Staff

Christopher J. Williams, a senior biomedical physics major, died April 10 of complications from Cystic Fibrosis. He was 23 years old.

Mr. Williams’ father, John Williams, said his son had a close circle of friends he enjoyed spending time with. He also liked camping, skiing, boating and golf. Mr. Williams graduated from Reading Memorial High School in 2006.

His father said Mr. Williams chose Northeastern University because of its urban location and strong co-op program. Both his father and uncle graduated from Northeastern, and his sister, Laura, is a middler nursing student at the university. Mr. Williams wanted to work in bio-engineering or robotics after he graduated, his father said.

Dan Blustein, a graduate student who worked with Mr. Williams on co-op, said he was a pleasure on the job. He described him as humble, diligent and eager to learn.

“He was easily the best undergraduate I’ve worked with,” Blustein said.

Others who worked with Mr. Williams or had him in class said he was remarkably devoted to academics despite his chronic condition. Cystic Fibrosis is a genetic disease that causes mucus accumulation in the lungs and digestive tract.

“He generally chose not to reveal his medical situation to those around him because he wanted to make the grade on his own terms,” Paul Champion, chair of Northeastern’s physics program, wrote in a department statement.

Mr. Williams particularly enjoyed the co-op he completed last fall in Professor Joseph Ayers’s lab at the university’s Marine Science Center in Nahant. He worked with multiple employees, including Blustein, in the Biomimetic Underwater Robot Program, programming and building parts for a robotic lobster.

“He just was a ray of sunshine. He was bright, bushy-tailed, just had everything going for him,” Ayers said.

Ayers described Mr. Williams as a very upbeat co-op student and said he had a wonderful attitude.

“So many students are wrapped up in angst about having to do classes, and he didn’t have any of that,” Ayers said. “I just saw him as someone who had a really bright future.”

Blustein characterized Mr. Williams as a friendly and loyal coworker. Blustein said he and his coworkers in Nahant generally take co-op students out to a celebratory dinner upon the conclusion of their term, but undergraduates do not usually reciprocate with their own tokens of appreciation.

Except Mr. Williams, that is, who used his own money to buy a $50 Dunkin’ Donuts gift card so lab employees could have breakfast one morning.

“[It showed] his kind heart, how much he was devoted to this process,” Blustein said.

Mr. Williams leaves his parents, John and Janet; a sister, Laura; and his grandparents, Lucky and Clare Williams and Bill and Peg Moore.

Mr. Williams’ peers and professors at Northeastern remember him as a hard-working student and caring man.

“Mr. Williams was held in extremely high regard by all who knew him,” Champion wrote in the department statement. “He had a remarkably positive attitude and he honored his life to the end. He served as an example for all of us, professors and students alike. Northeastern lost a man of courage.”

Donations can be made to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, 220 N. Main St., Natick, MA 01760.