Dr Kelly Williams is an NHMRC Early Career Research Fellow and Group Leader: Genomics & Bioinformatics within the multidisciplinary Centre for Motor Neuron Disease (MND) Research at Macquarie University. She completed her PhD in 2013 at the University of Sydney and was awarded the competitive MNDRIA Bill Gole MND Postdoctoral Fellowship. As one of Australia’s leading early career MND researchers, she was immediately recruited as a founding member of the Centre for MND Research at Macquarie University within the Genetics Research Team. 

The majority of her academic career has focused on determining the genetic basis of motor neuron disease. She has played a central role in critical breakthroughs in MND through the identification of causal mutations in several genes. These seminal discoveries have opened new chapters in MND and frontotemporal dementia (FTD) research and have led to key insights into the pathology of these diseases. Her research has directly translated into clinical practice with these disease genes now added to diagnostic tests worldwide, including preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) and pre-symptomatic testing. 

MEDI2201

LaTeX and Overleaf training course for HDR students and supervisors

Dr Williams’ Genomics & Bioinformatics team’s current MND research themes are uncovering ancestral cryptic relatedness, identifying disease-modifying factors underlying disease variability, and bioinformatic and biostatistical analysis of omics datasets (including RNA-seq transcriptome, SNP microarray, whole genome/exome sequencing datasets and DNA methylation microarrays).