Heather Williams

Biologist and Ornithologist Class of 1993
location icon Location
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
age iconAge
38 at time of award

About Heather's Work

Heather Williams is an ornithologist who specializes in the field of neuroethology.

Williams has made significant contributions to the study of mechanisms for song learning in birds and was the first to describe how the song a bird hears is processed by the motor pathways normally used for song production.  Her research interests include laterality, song organization, sexual dimorphism in song perception, kinship and song-model salience, and the mechanisms of dialect maintenance.  Her research focuses on Zebra finches (Taeniopygia guttata), small songbirds native to the semiarid regions of Australia and Timor.  She has developed an experimental model that temporarily blocks (during the period when they learn most readily) the ability of songbirds to learn through mimicry; measuring the capability of adult birds to learn subsequently provides an index of neural and behavioral plasticity in the adult brain. Her discoveries shed light on language acquisition and may aid clinicians to improve therapies for people whose speech has been damaged through stroke, disease, or head injury.

Biography

Williams is a professor of biology at Williams College, where she has been on the faculty since 1988.  She was an associate professor at Rockefeller University (1986-88) and a fellow at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (1977-78).

Williams received an A.B. (1977) from Bowdoin College and a Ph.D. (1985) from Rockefeller University.

 

Last updated January 1, 2005

Published on July 1, 1993

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