The University of Utah School of Medicine
Associate Professor, Department of Neurobiology
Megan Williams is an Associate professor at the University of Utah School of Medicine in the Department of Neurobiology. Megan has a long-standing interest in developmental neurobiology. She completed her PhD investigating the role of the Netrin-1 receptor UNC5H in axon guidance and cell death with Dr. Lindsey Hinck at UC Santa Cruz. She then completed postdoctoral training with Dr. Anirvan Ghosh at UC San Diego. In San Diego, Megan began a new project to identify mechanisms mediating the development of target specific synapse formation in the mammalian brain where she discovered that many aspects of synapse specificity are maintained in dissociated neuron cultures. She used the culture system to screen for new synapse specificity molecules and identified several previously uncharacterized synaptic cell adhesion molecules. Since 2011, the Williams lab at Utah has focused on understanding the role of cell adhesion in synapse formation, function, and disease using the hippocampus as a model system and a variety of molecular, genetic, and imaging techniques. Outside of lab, Megan enjoys running and cycling in the mountains around Salt Lake City and finding new playgrounds with her daughter.
