Statistician Talithia Williams is an innovative, award-winning college professor, a co-host of the PBS NOVA series NOVA Wonders and a speaker whose popular TED Talk, “Own Your Body’s Data”, extols the value of statistics in quantifying personal health information. She demystifies mathematics in amusing and insightful ways to excite students, parents, educators and the larger community about STEM education and its possibilities.
Williams is a proud graduate of Spelman College, Howard University, and Rice University. In 2015, she won the Mathematical Association of America’s Henry L. Alder Award for Distinguished Teaching by a Beginning College or University Mathematics Faculty Member, which honors faculty members whose teaching is effective and extraordinary, and extends its influence beyond the classroom. She is the author of Power in Numbers: The Rebel Women of Mathematics, a book highlighting the influence of women in the mathematical sciences and has narrated several science documentary films. Her research involves developing statistical models that emphasize the spatial and temporal structure of data and applying them to problems in the environment. She has worked at NASA, National Security Agency and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and has partnered with the World Health Organization on research regarding cataract surgical rates in African countries.

Through her research and work in the community at large, she is helping change the collective mindset regarding STEM, rebranding the field of mathematics as a logical, productive career path that is crucial to the future of the country.