Paul Michael Williams

Paul Michael Williams, or "Mickey" was born at Alexandria Hospital on February 28, 1953, and died on October 24, 2024, to Eleanor Trenary Williams and Paul Edward Williams and raised in Springfield Virginia, graduating from Robert E Lee High School in 1971. He attended the University of Virginia, joined the ATO fraternity and graduated with a double BA in Biology and Psychology in 1976. After working at Maloy Laboratories in Springfield, he returned to the University of Virginia in 1979 for graduate work, obtaining his PhD in 1985 studying the vesicular stomatitis virus under Sue Emerson. He joined Gordon Ringold's lab in the Stanford Department of Pharmacology, Medical School and then Syntex for his post-doctoral work. In 1991 Mickey moved to Genentech in South San Francisco. He spent 13 years there developing and implementing molecular based approaches to support development and implementation of therapeutics to improve patient health. He was the author of quantitative "real-time" PCR papers contributing to the development of this powerful technology, mmanaged a new gene expression core facility, with not only RT-PCR, but microarray projects. Mickey moved to Roche Diagnostics in Pleasanton in 2005 as a Senior Research Group Leader in the Genomics Oncology Department where he managed groups focused on genomic technology development, biomarker identification and validation studies employing microarray, RT-PCR and next generation sequencing. Mickey then moved across the country in 2010 to direct the Molecular Characterization Laboratory group, established by the National Cancer Institute, Division of Cancer Treatment and Diagnosis, to focus on development of state of the art genomic technologies for clinical research at Fort Dedrick in Frederick, Maryland. Mickey as director developed and led the group until he retired on February 1. Mickey had 28 issued US Patents and over 68 publications. He was married for a few years to his first wife, Caroline Kai, in 1992. He is survived by his second wife, Susan M. Keating, and two sons, Paul Mitchell and Cameron Michael Keating Williams. Funeral service are private.