Professor Kate Williams | UniSC | University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, Australia

Kate Williams is a developmental scientist, intervention designer, evaluator, and leader, working at the intersection of health and education to address inequities that often arise from early childhood. She is recognised as an international expert on social-emotional, self-regulation, executive function, cognitive, and sleep development, and the parenting, educational, and intervention contexts that support such. Kate typically uses large population datasets, program design and evaluation, and modern quantitative and mixed method approaches across her research program. She is an expert in the use of flagship Australian population datasets including the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children, and the Longitudinal Study of Indigenous Children, and is a leading international playgroup researcher. Kate is also a Registered Music Therapist and so is interested in the ways that music can be used to support development and wellbeing. Her ARC DECRA fellowship saw Kate develop the Rhythm and Movement for Self-Regulation (RAMSR) program, which has been commercialised and is disseminated internationally.

Kate brings extensive industry experience having held executive leadership roles in a national not for profit

organisation delivering services to children, families, and communities, and maintains multiple board roles. Core to Kate’s approach are collegial team-building across disciplines, and collaborative relationships with research end users in community, industry, government, and non-government organisations. She brings strong stakeholder engagement and a focus on capability building, implementation science, knowledge translation, and research impact to every research project she undertakes