Loren Williams was born in Seattle, Washington. In 1981 he received his B.Sc. in Chemistry from the University of Washington where he worked in the laboratory of Martin Gouterman. In 1985 he received his Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from Duke University, where he worked the laboratory of Barbara Shaw. He was an American Cancer Society Postdoctoral Fellow first at Duke then at Harvard. From 1988 to 1992 he was an NIH Postdoctoral Fellow in the laboratory of Alex Rich in the Department of Biology at MIT. He joined the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Georgia Tech in 1992. He was promoted to Associate Professor in 1996, and to Full Professor in 2000. Loren received an NSF CAREER Award in 1995, and the Sigma Xi Award for best paper from Georgia Tech in 1996. Currently he is director of a NASA Astrobiology Institute funded center focusing on the transition from nucleic acid-based life to protein-based life. This transition was made by the macromolecular machine responsible for the synthesis of proteins, called the ribosome. The collective scientific goal of the Georgia Tech Astrobiology Center is to chemically rewind the "tape of life" to before the last universal common ancestor (LUCA) of all living organisms.

Loren and his wife Nidhi have a son (born 8/29/94) named Justin.

[Justin way back when | Justin later on | Justin even later on]

Williams homepage =>