Dr. Lakiesha Williams
Associate Professor Biomedical Engineering, University of Florida
PhD in Biomedical Engineering Mississippi State University
Written by Catie Profaci
When Dr. Lakiesha Williams chose a microbiology major upon entering Louisiana State University, it was not necessarily because she loved biology. The choice was driven by a desire to emulate her older sister, who loved playing school with Lakiesha and taught her to read at the young age of three. But the copious memorizing inherent in college biology did not capture Lakiesha’s passion. Instead, she excelled in calculus and was drawn to more analytical disciplines. In her second semester, Lakiesha switched her major from microbiology to biological engineering, and she has been thriving in this field ever since. Lakiesha is now an associate professor of biomedical engineering at the University of Florida, where she focuses on brain tissue mechanics in traumatic brain injury and other neuropathologies.
During her undergraduate calculus class, despite its 7:30 AM start time, Lakiesha began to demonstrate not only a talent for math but also for explaining the concepts to her classmates. Her calculus professor recognized her abilities and would often have Lakiesha solve math problems up at the board or help other students work through the problems one-on-one. Lakiesha’s confidence began to take root. After she changed her major, she took an engineering class with Dr. Marybeth Lima, then a new biological engineering professor at LSU. Impressed with Lakiesha’s performance in class, Marybeth soon recruited her to do research in the Lima lab. It was here that Lakiesha learned the basics of engineering research through fun projects, including working with a team of students to design one of the first iterations of a tiger cage for the LSU mascot. When Lakiesha was ready to graduate from university, at Marybeth’s urging, she decided to stay at LSU to earn a master’s degree. Ultimately, Marybeth encouraged Lakiesha to pursue a PhD as well.
For her PhD, Lakiesha joined the biomedical engineering program at Mississippi State University where she worked under two advisors, one in biomedical engineering and one in mechanical engineering. The mechanical engineer was modeling the failures that occur inside metals, polymers, and other inorganic materials. For her thesis project, Lakiesha wanted to adapt these models and use a similar strategy to better understand failures in living, organic tissue. She chose to focus on tendons: experimentally assessing tendon mechanics and using these observations to inform mathematical models of tendon function. While this work might appear far from neuroscience, Lakiesha developed a crucial skill set that she would later apply to the brain.
After earning her PhD, Lakiesha was offered a position as research faculty at Mississippi State. While she was certainly qualified for many other jobs, at this point Lakiesha had recognized that she possessed a skill that would take her far in academia: the ability to apply laser focus to a research question and throw all her energy into solving it. After a couple years as research faculty, she became a tenure track assistant professor. During this time in her career, Lakiesha attended a proposal showcase for funding agencies and ended up in a conversation about the brain. Funding agencies wanted to know: could she model brain mechanics as she had modeled tendons? Always ready for a challenge, Lakiesha agreed to try, and her career took off in an entirely new direction.
Lakiesha now works to understand the brain using multiscale modeling, which involves integrating mechanical, chemical, and physical properties of brain tissue. Using this multimodal technique, she studies how the scalp, skull, cerebrospinal fluid, and brain interact with each other normally and in conditions such as intense vibration or high impact. These models are designed to understand the brain not only as a whole tissue, but also at the level of brain fibers and brain cells. Lakiesha’s lab works with collaborators to validate and inform these models with pre-clinical experimental data. Her collaborative work has been relevant for creating better physical brain models for use in vehicle safety testing. These models used to be rather polymeric and homogeneous, but now they more faithfully represent the mechanistic properties of a real brain and how it might be damaged upon impact. Despite having been in the neuroscience field for many years now, as she looks to the future, Lakiesha is excited about diving even deeper into studying the brain. She has identified many gaps in our understanding of traumatic brain injury and hopes to help fill those gaps with computational models of what happens to the brain after physical trauma.
Lakiesha has been a pioneer throughout her career, creating a new, fascinating space between biomedical engineering and neuroscience. However, being a “pioneer” often comes with extra challenges. Entering LSU, a primarily white institution, was a new learning experience for her. When she switched into the biological engineering major, Lakiesha was one of few people of color in her major. Despite feeling highly respected and welcomed by her classmates and the faculty, she was forced to confront her personal insecurities. This imposter syndrome was oppressive at times, almost leading Lakiesha to reconsider her academic path. To stay the course, Lakiesha realized that she had to intentionally confront this internal battle of self-doubt. She credits many of her peers and the LSU biological engineering faculty, who were collegial and supportive, for helping her through this battle as she progressed through her academic program. Lakiesha persevered, learning not only the science of biological engineering, but also the art of being The First and how to manage the uncomfortable feelings that can accompany trailblazing. Lakiesha went on to become the first Black biomedical engineering PhD graduate from Mississippi State and the first Black faculty member in biomedical engineering at both Mississippi State and the University of Florida, where she now has her own lab.
When Lakiesha reflects on her journey, she recognizes the incredible influence that a few good mentors—like LSU’s Bio Engineering department chair, Dr. Marybeth Lima—had on her trajectory as a scientist. She tries to pay it forward, reaching out each year to the small number of students of color in biomedical engineering and inviting them to tour the lab, see experiments, and listen in on her lab meetings. While sometimes these students end up working in the lab, the purpose is not to recruit them but rather just to expose them to the world of research. As she builds bridges of understanding between the disparate fields of biomedical engineering and neuroscience, Lakiesha undoubtedly inspires these students and others to innovate and excel as she has.
Find out more about Lakiesha and her lab’s research here.
Listen to Lakiesha’s full interview with Nancy on December 6, 2022 below!
