Wilton Williams, PhD, an associate professor in surgery, has been named a recipient of the Ruth and A. Morris Williams Faculty Research Prize. Established by the Williams family to advance research opportunities for early-career faculty members, this prize is awarded for research excellence at Duke. Williams was recognized for his outstanding contributions in clinical science research.
Williams joined the faculty of the Duke Division of Surgical Sciences in 2016. He holds joint appointments in the Departments of Medicine and Integrative Immunobiology and is a member of the Duke Cancer Institute and the Duke Human Vaccine Institute (DHVI), where he co-directs the DHVI Training and Mentoring Program.
Williams’s research is focused on understanding host immunity, particularly B-cell-derived antibody responses to HIV infection in humans, and simian HIV (SHIV) infections in non-human primates that serve as animal models for HIV-1 infection in humans. He has also been a pioneer in immune monitoring of human HIV-1 vaccine clinical trials.