David Williams, DSc

Professor and Director of International Affairs, Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine

Professor Williams, who studied metallurgy at the University of Birmingham (UK) in the 1960s,  has had 55 years-experience in biomaterials, medical device technology and tissue engineering, mostly at the University of Liverpool, where he was Professor of Clinical Engineering, Director of the UK Centre for Tissue Engineering and Pro-Vice Chancellor. He was Professor of Biomaterials and Director of International Affairs at Wake Forest Institute of Regenerative Medicine, North Carolina, USA until 2022; he has the title of Emeritus Professor from both Liverpool and Wake Forest. He has published over 35 books and 440 papers: his textbook, Essential Biomaterials Science, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2014. He was Editor-in-Chief of Biomaterials, the world’s leading journal in this field between 2000 and 2014. He was elected as Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in 1999 and as Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales in 2021; he has received major awards from the US and European societies of biomaterials. He was scientific advisor to the European Commission and wrote several opinions on risk management in health technologies and nanotechnologies, upon which several regulations were based. In South Africa, he is the Founding Director and Chairman of a company, Strait Access Technologies, that has developed low cost, high technology medical devices that can be used with minimally invasive procedures to treat young adults in sub-Sarah Africa who are suffering from rheumatic heart disease but currently have no therapies available to them.