Dr. Wilton B. Williams is Assistant Professor in the Department of Medicine at Duke University School of Medicine. He studied HIV pathogenesis while completing his PhD at the University of Florida under the mentorship of Dr. Maureen Goodenow. Following the completion of his doctoral work, he moved to Duke Human Vaccine Institute (DHVI) at Duke University in 2012 to work with Drs. Barton F. Haynes and Georgia D. Tomaras as a postdoctoral fellow where he participated in studies investigating the molecular mechanisms of the host immune responses to HIV-1 envelope (Env)-vaccinations. He was promoted to the Faculty in the Department of Medicine at Duke University School of Medicine in 2016 as a Medical Instructor, and then as an Assistant Professor in 2018. During his tenure at DHVI, he has worked on immune monitoring of HIV-1 Env vaccinations in rhesus macaques and humans. His work on characterizing the B cell responses in HIV-1 Env vaccinated uninfected individuals was the first to implicate the microbiome in impacting HIV-1 Env vaccine-induced antibody responses. He also led the first antibody repertoire studies of macaques infected with novel SHIVs bearing transmitted-founder (TF) Env. His current research portfolio at the DHVI is focused on immune monitoring of HIV-1 vaccinated uninfected individuals, and understanding the B cell responses in SHIV-infected non-human primates that can translate to the development of an effective efficacious HIV-1 vaccine. More recently, he has embarked on studies of neonatal immunity to TF Env SHIVs in order to investigate the feasibility of neonatal HIV-1 vaccination as a potential strategy to end the HIV-1 pandemic.
