Dr. Williams is an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Hematology/Oncology at the University of Minnesota. Dr. Williams cares for children, adolescents, and young adults with leukemia, lymphoma, and other more rare hematologic malignancies. Within this patient population and alongside Dr. Shane McAllister in Pediatric Infectious Disease, she co-founded a comprehensive clinic in 2020 for solid organ transplant (SOT) patients at risk for EBV related complications including the development of post-transplant lymphoproliferative disorder (PTLD). The goal of the clinic is to give uniform and data driven evaluation for EBV DNAemia and monitoring guidelines for diagnosing PTLD. The clinic regularly follows EBV positive SOT patients within the first two years of their transplant and any SOT patient with symptoms or imaging concerning for PTLD. Dr. Williams also heads a research laboratory focused on improving T cell immunotherapy against hematologic malignancies with an emphasis on refining T cell function in the central nervous system and developing new targets for chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-T cell therapy.
Prior to coming to the University of Minnesota, Dr. Williams received an MS in Pathology in 2005, an MD in 2011, and completed Pediatrics residency in 2014, all at the University of Iowa. Dr. Williams completed fellowship training in Pediatric Hematology/Oncology and Bone Marrow Transplant in 2017 here at the University of Minnesota. During her fellowship, she completed post-doctoral research with Dr. Michael Verneris during which she characterized the presence T cell exhaustion in the peripheral blood of AML patients undergoing haploidentical NK cell adoptive therapy and in the bone marrow of patients with relapsed/refractory leukemia undergoing hematopoietic stem cell transplant. Dr. Williams is board-certified in Pediatrics and Pediatric Hematology/Oncology.
