Simon Williams

Simon Williams is a Fellow at The Australian National University (ANU), affiliated with the Research School of Biology (RSB) in the Department of BIO. His research focuses on Structural Biology, Synthetic Biology, Plant-Microbe Interactions, Plant Innate Immunity, and Fungal Pathogenesis. Williams joined ANU in 2016 as part of Professor Peter Solomon's group, where he investigates how effector proteins from necrotrophic fungi cause disease in wheat. He leads the Williams Plant Structural Immunology laboratory within the Plant Microbe Interaction theme, Division of Plant Sciences, RSB. His work utilizes structural biology, protein biochemistry, and synthetic biology approaches to study fungal pathogenesis and plant immunity. He was awarded an ARC Future Fellowship in 2020 to explore the molecular basis of fungal rust diseases in plants.

Simon J Williams is a researcher at the Australian National University, focusing on the structural and functional analysis of plant and animal immune receptors, particularly TIR domains and NLR proteins. His work explores the molecular mechanisms underlying plant immunity, including the roles of TIR domains in signaling, self-association, and autoregulation. He investigates how immune receptors interact with pathogen effectors and how these interactions trigger defense responses such as programmed cell death. His research also extends to the structural basis of immune receptor assembly and the functional roles of domains like the CC domain and PR-1 proteins in plant immunity.