Dr. Williams received her BA in Psychology from Brooklyn College, City University of New York, in 1998. She studied behavioral neuroscience with Dr. Harvey Grill and Dr. Joel Kaplan at University of Pennsylvania, and received her PhD from the Department of Psychology in 2003. As a postdoctoral fellow, she worked with Dr. Michael Schwartz and Dr. Denis Baskin in the Division of Metabolism, Endocrinology, and Nutrition at the University of Washington School of Medicine. Dr. Williams joined the Department of Psychology and Program in Neuroscience at Florida State University as an Assistant Professor in 2008, and was promoted to Full Professor in 2020. She is currently a member of the Society for Neuroscience, Society for the Study of Ingestive Behavior, The Obesity Society, and is a standing member on the Pathophysiology of Obesity and Diabetes study section at NIH.