Tiffani L. Williams

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Biography

Tiffani L. Williams is a Teaching Professor and Director of Onramp Programs in the Department of Computer Science, and a Dean’s Fellow in Inclusion, Belonging, and Engagement in the Grainger College of Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. From 2017 to 2020, she was the Director of Computer Science Programs and Professor of the Practice at Northeastern University-Charlotte. From 2005 to 2017, she was a faculty member in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Texas A&M University.

Her awards and honors include a McKnight Doctoral Fellowship, an Alfred P. Sloan Postdoctoral Fellowship, an Edward, Frances, and Shirley Daniels Fellowship at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, a Denice Denton Emerging Leader ABIE award, and a PopTech Science Fellow award. Williams has been recognized for teaching excellence at Texas A&M with Undergraduate and Graduate Faculty Teaching Excellence awards and the Distinguished Award in Teaching by the Association of Former Students. At Illinois, she has been recognized as a Teacher Ranked as Excellent by their Students.

Her research interests include computer science education, multiple pathway education, computational biology, and inclusive science communication.

Research Interests

• Reproducible research
• Experimental performance studies of algorithms
• Hhigh-performance computing
• Phylogenetic tree inference
• Bioinformatics
• Computer science education

Selected Articles in Journals

• Ralph W. Crosby and Tiffani L. Williams, "Fast algorithms for computing phylogenetic divergence time," BMC Bioinformatics, 18 (Suppl 15): 514, 2017
• Cody E. Hinchliff, Stephen A. Smith, James F. Allman, J. Gordon Burleigh, Ruchi Chaudhary, Lyndon M. Coghill, Keith A. Crandall, Jiabin Deng, Bryan T. Drew, Romina Gazis, Karl Gude, David S. Hibbett, Laura A. Katz, H. Dail Laughinghouse IV, Emily Jane McTavish, Peter E. Midford, Christopher L. Owen, Richard H. Ree, Jonathan A. Rees, Douglas E. Soltis, Tiffani L. Williams, and Karen A. Cranston, "Synthesis of phylogeny and taxonomy into a comprehensive tree of life," Proceeding of the National Academy of Science (PNAS), 112 (41), 12764-12769, 2015
• Robert W. Meredith, Jan E. Janecka, John Gatesy, Oliver A. Ryder, Colleen A. Fisher, Emma C. Teeling, Alisha Goodbla, Eduardo Eizirik, Tanja Stadler, Dan L. Rabosky, Rodney L. Honeycutt, John J. Flynn, Cynthia Steiner, Tiffani L. Williams, Terence Robinson, Angela Burk, Nadia A. Ayoub, Mark S. Springer, Williams J. Murphy, "Impacts of the Cretaceous Terrestrial Revolution and KPg Extinction on Extant Mammal Diversification," Science, 334 (6055), 521-524, 2011.
• Suzanne J. Matthews and Tiffani L. Williams, "An Efficient and Extensible Approach for Compressing Phylogenetic Trees," BMC Bioinformatics, 12 (Suppl 10): S16, 2011
• Suzanne J. Matthews and Tiffani L. Williams, "MrsRF: An Efficient MapReduce Algorithm for Analyzing Large Collections of Evolutionary Trees," BMC Bioinformatics, 11 (Supp 1): S15, 2010

Articles in Conference Proceedings

• C. Brodley, M. Barry, A. Connell, C. Gill, I. Gorton, B. Hescott, B. Lackaye, C. LuBien, L. Razzaq, A. Shesh, T. Williams, and A. Danyluk. 2020. “An MS in CS for non-CS Majors: Moving to Increase Diversity of Thought and Demographics in CS,” SIGCSE’20: Proceedings of the 51st ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education, February 2020.

Teaching Honors

• Association of Former Students (AFS) Distinguished Achievement Award in Teaching–College Level, Texas A&M University, 2016
• Undergraduate Faculty Teaching Excellence Award, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Texas A&M University, 2014
• Graduate Faculty Teaching Excellence Award, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Texas A&M University, 2011

Research Honors

• PopTech Science Fellow, 2012
• Denice Denton Emerging Leader ABIE Award, 2011
• Radcliffe Institute Fellow, 2004–2005
• Alfred P. Sloan Postdoctoral Fellowship in Computational Biology, 2002–2004