Katy Williams

Assistant Professor of Mathematics and Computer Science

Education

  • Ph.D. University of Arizona
  • M.S. University of Arizona
  • B.S. Davidson College

Areas of Expertise

  • Data Visualization
  • Human-Computer Interaction

Background

My research is in data visualization, a creative side of computer science where I can learn about interesting datasets while also building beautiful charts and graphs to aid understanding of the data. I have built visualizations for technical, high-performance computing data but have also published work on people's sketches of data and how they think about a dataset.

I took my first computer science course at Davidson College and was one of the founding student members of the PRONTO Lab (PRoductive ONline TOols) with Prof. Laurie Heyer where I worked for two summers. After graduating in the first class of Computer Science majors at the College, I continued on to the University of Arizona for my Ph.D.

I strive to make computer science an inclusive, welcoming environment by mentoring women+ in CS, hosting department-wide social events, and leading the Student Volunteers at the IEEE VIS Conference. My hobbies include making pizza and swimming.