Associate Professor, Department of Family, Population & Preventive Medicine, Stony Brook School of Medicine
Biography
Dr. Williams is an Associate Professor at Stony Brook University with a primary appointment in the Department of Family, Population, and Preventive Medicine and a secondary appointment in the Department of Medicine. She is Assistant Dean for Student Diversity where she serves as the primary liaison between Stony Brook Medicine and Stony Brook University, acting to encourage diverse undergraduate and graduate students to seek out and succeed in careers in the health sciences. Dr. Williams is also an affiliate faculty member in the Institute for STEM Education where she works with underrepresented community college students who are interested in biomedical careers.
Dr. Williams has investigated the use of gene therapy in the prevention of AIDS and done extensive work on the effectiveness of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDS), NO-releasing-NSAIDs (NO-NSAIDS), and other pharmacological agents on stemming the progression of cancer. In this capacity, she is defining the mechanistic role of NF-κB and other transcriptional factors in colon cancer prevention in response to novel chemo-therapeutic/-preventive agents. Currently, she is addressing the underlying genetic/regulatory causes associated with cancer racial health disparity. As such, Dr. Williams' group is assessing the dysregulation of miRNAs and aberrant DNA methylation as factors influencing racial health disparity in the incidence and mortality rates of colorectal cancer.
Dr. Williams earned her BS from Savannah State University, an MS from Tuskegee University, and a PhD in molecular biology at Purdue University. She completed a postdoctoral fellowship in infectious diseases at Harvard University and conducted postdoctoral work at the New England Regional Primate Research Center's Department of Immunology and the American Health Foundation. Dr. Williams then joined Harvard University as a research scientist and was later recruited to Stony Brook as a Research Assistant Professor, being promoted to Associate Professor with tenure in 2013.
Dr. Williams has investigated the use of gene therapy in the prevention of AIDS and done extensive work on the effectiveness of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDS), NO-releasing-NSAIDs (NO-NSAIDS), and other pharmacological agents on stemming the progression of cancer. In this capacity, she is defining the mechanistic role of NF-κB and other transcriptional factors in colon cancer prevention in response to novel chemo-therapeutic/-preventive agents. Currently, she is addressing the underlying genetic/regulatory causes associated with cancer racial health disparity. As such, Dr. Williams' group is assessing the dysregulation of miRNAs and aberrant DNA methylation as factors influencing racial health disparity in the incidence and mortality rates of colorectal cancer.
Dr. Williams earned her BS from Savannah State University, an MS from Tuskegee University, and a PhD in molecular biology at Purdue University. She completed a postdoctoral fellowship in infectious diseases at Harvard University and conducted postdoctoral work at the New England Regional Primate Research Center's Department of Immunology and the American Health Foundation. Dr. Williams then joined Harvard University as a research scientist and was later recruited to Stony Brook as a Research Assistant Professor, being promoted to Associate Professor with tenure in 2013.