Dr Williams leads the Diagnostics and Mammalian infectious Disease Research group at CSIRO’s Australian Centre for Disease Preparedness, Geelong, Victoria. This group contributes to national and regional emergency animal disease diagnostics and surveillance. Dr Williams’ research interests include the diagnosis, characterisation and epidemiology of emerging transboundary viruses that affect animals and humans. His work has focused on Japanese encephalitis virus and other arboviruses, as well as African swine fever (ASF). Dr Williams is a member of the National Arbovirus and Malaria Advisory Committee (an Australian Department of Health technical advisory committee). He leads the WOAH Reference Laboratory for ASF at ACDP, and co-chairs the WOAH ASF Reference Laboratory Network. He is a Fellow of the Australasian Society for Microbiology.