WilliamsMemo3REV

__**BioSketch for Willil8 Williams, 2020**__ Willil8 Williams MS, PhD, Science and Technology Studies, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 2013 MS, Mechanical Engineering, University of Colorado at Boulder, 2008 BS, Mechanical Engineering, Iowa State University, 2004

Willil8 Williams is an Assistant Professor in the James Madison College, Sociology Department at Michigan State University in East Lansing, Michigan. As a sociologist with engineering training, she is interested in processes of innovation and the political economy of sustainable development. As an STS scholar, she leverages theories of expertise, transnationalism and social construction of technology to explore the connective tissue of government bodies, non-governmental organizations and social entrepreneurship. She is continually inspired by cases where scientists and engineers in the developing world are re-ordering the way technology is designed, made and, or, used.

Dr. Williams' first book, //Perfect Sight: Transnationalism and Medical NGOs with a Sustainable Gaze// (Cornell University Press, 2017) explores the way non-governmental organizations are redefining appropriate surgical technology-practice within the frame of the World Health Organization's Vision 2020 program on reducing preventable blindness. More recently, she has followed the growth of American and international NGOs composed primarily of engineers that design and implement appropriate technologies which are applicable in many public and private spaces. To that effect, she presented at the Society for the Social Study of Science (4S) on the results of her American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) fellowship at the U.S. Agency for International Development (US AID) where she worked on US policy for transfer of alternative energy technologies to developing nations.

Dr. Williams has been part of the Food, Environment, Agriculture, Science & Technology (FEAST) research focus area in the Sociology department since 2014 with a focus on South Asia and East Africa. At James Madison she is the Director of the Science, Technology, Environment and Public Policy specialization. As an Adjunct Lecturer in the Mechanical Engineering Department she is excited to be introducing a new inter-disciplinary concentration in Global Sustainable Design.