Feeding Lab Team Members
she/her
I received my Ph.D. from Duke University in 2004 and immediately joined the faculty at ºÚÁϳԹÏ, where I was promoted to Professor in 2012. Over the course of my career, I have blended comparative and clinically-oriented experimental research to understand patterns and principles underlying motor control and sensorimotor integration as it relates to mammalian feeding. While I am very interested in the feeding process from neurophysiological and biomechanical perspectives, this interest is also driven by a desire to understand anatomy and morphology and their impact on function. My research has been consistently supported by grants from the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health (NIH), but i am most proud of the awards that I have received for mentoring students, including most recently the 2020 ºÚÁÏ³Ô¹Ï Outstanding Graduate Faculty award, and the 2019 and 2020 Outstanding Honors Tutorial Thesis Mentor Awards. I was also the recipient of the 2020 Presidential Research Scholar award and named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2022. I am active in several research societies, including the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology and am a standing member on the NIH Motor Function, Speech, and Rehabilitation Study Section.
Websites
he/him
I am a Research Scientist working on the functional morphology and biomechanics of feeding behavior in vertebrates. I received my Ph.D. from the Museum National d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris, France, in 2010 studying the coordination of cranial and postcranial movements during lizard feeding. I then came to the Williams lab at ºÚÁÏ³Ô¹Ï in 2010 as a postdoctoral associate to assist with developing the X-ray Reconstruction Of Moving Morphology (XROMM) lab at ºÚÁϳԹÏ. We now routinely use the XROMM methodology for the various projects to investigate mammalian feeding and swallowing.
Hannah joined the lab in 2016 and supports all aspects of our research, including coordinating experiments, data management and analysis, and animal husbandry.
I am a Ph.D. student in the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Graduate Program at ºÚÁϳԹÏ. I am interested in form-function relationships, particularly when existing structures are co-opted for novel roles. To address this, I am studying protrusible gular display structures that are supported by the hyoid apparatus and associated tissues. These display structures appear in squamates (lizards and snakes) as dewlaps, beards, or frills, as you might see in anoles, bearded dragons, frilled lizards, respectively. My work specifically aims to explore biomechanics of display mechanisms in relation to their morphology and how the evolution of the hyoid apparatus for display behaviors in squamates may have impacted swallowing and respiratory mechanics.
Chloe is an undergraduate student at ºÚÁÏ³Ô¹Ï studying biology and psychology. She has been a research assistant in the Williams Lab since 2023.
Hollis is an undergraduate student at ºÚÁÏ³Ô¹Ï in the exercise physiology/pre-physical therapy program. She has been working in the Williams lab since fall, 2024.