Amy Williams Receives Excellence Award for Assistant Professors
Amy Williams of the Department of Geological Sciences has received a Spring 2022 UF Excellence Award for Assistant Professors, supporting her research expenses in the coming year.
The annual award recognizes 10 pre-tenure faculty members throughout the university who have demonstrated exceptional promise in their research. The award provides a one-time allocation of $5,000, which can be used to fund travel, equipment, books, graduate stipends, and other research-related expenses.
“This award was a surprise to receive, and I am honored to be recognized alongside so many extraordinary assistant professors at UF,” Williams said. “As an early career woman in science, it is also affirming to see my work — certainly augmented by my incredible collaborators and students — recognized at the university level.”
Williams, PhD, has been an assistant professor of geology at UF since 2018. Since 2009 she has been a member of the NASA Mars Curiosity rover science team where she works with the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument, and she is also a Participating Scientist on the NASA Mars Perseverance rover science team. As a geobiologist and astrobiologist, her research focuses on the preservation of evidence for life in the rock record, both on Earth and Mars.
“I plan to leverage the prestige and award funds to continue to recruit and support a diverse and inclusive group of graduate and undergraduate student researchers in my Life on the Edge lab,” Williams said.
