Professor Suzannah Williams
About
Professor Suzannah Williams (BSc Zoology, University of Aberdeen) completed her PhD at the Royal Veterinary College, London investigating nutritional regulation of ovarian function. This involved collaborative studies in Glasgow, Dublin and Perth, Australia.
Following her PhD, Professor Williams was awarded a Wain Fellowship and a Lalor Fellowship to work in Perth, Australia for two years. Professor Williams then moved to the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York where she generated a mouse model of primary ovarian insufficiency.
Professor Williams established her research group at the University of Oxford investigating the role of the oocyte in regulating fertility and ovarian function supported by a MRC New Investigator grant.
She continues to work on primary ovarian insufficiency and understanding ovarian function in health and disease. Professor Williams has also expanded her programme of research to study human ovarian function and now leads the Oxford Ovarian Fertility Preservation Research Programme developing fertility preservation techniques.
Professor Williams has also established the Rhino Fertility Project with the aim of developing techniques to culture rhino ovarian tissue and generate follicles and eggs in vitro. This project will develop techniques using Southern White Rhino ovarian tissue with the goal of saving the Northern White Rhino of which there are only two females left.
More information is available about the studies being carried out by the Williams group on the Ovarian Research website.
Professor Williams is also an editorial board member for the Journal Reproduction and Fertility (lay Editor); member of the Council Society for Reproduction and Fertility; Chair of Public Engagement and Membership Committee for the Society for Reproduction and Fertility; and in 2010 was the Society for Reproduction and Fertility New Investigator of the Year.
Research groups:
Expertise
- Reproduction
- Endangered species
- Ovarian research
- Fertility preservation
- Cloning
- Northern white rhino preservation
- Precision medicine
Selected publications
- Cloning for the Twenty-First Century and Its Place in Endangered Species Conservation (Annual Review of Animal Biosciences, 2024)
- Improved preservation of ovarian tissue morphology that is compatible with antigen detection using a fixative mixture of formalin and acetic acid (Human Reproduction, 2021)
- Analysing culture methods of frozen human ovarian tissue to improve follicle survival (Reproduction and Fertility, 2021)
- In vitro and in vivo mouse follicle development in ovaries and reaggregated ovaries (Reproduction, 2019)
