Biography

Wilton Williams, PhD, is an associate professor in the Department of Surgery, Division of Surgical Sciences, in the Duke University School of Medicine. He also serves as co-director for the Training and Mentoring Program within the Duke Human Vaccine Institute.

Williams earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in chemistry from Hunter College, City University of New York, in 2004. He earned his PhD in biomedical sciences from the University of Florida in Gainesville, FL, in 2011. Williams studied HIV pathogenesis under the mentorship of Dr. Maureen Goodenow at the University of Florida. Subsequently, he pursued postdoctoral studies in HIV immunobiology and vaccine development at Duke University under the mentorship of Barton Haynes, MD, and Georgia Tomaras, PhD. He was first promoted to the faculty at Duke in 2016.

His 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 (NHPs) that serve as animal models for human HIV-1 infection. He has also been a pioneer in immune monitoring of human HIV-1 vaccine clinical trials.