ROGER R. WILLIAMS, MD, Founder      (1944-1998)

Roger R. Williams, M.D., professor of internal medicine and a recognized expert in the field of cardiovascular genetics, was the founding director of the Cardiovascular Genetics Research Clinic.  He was one of the medical school's most successful faculty members in obtaining research funding.  After joining the U of U faculty in 1976, he was principal investigator on 21 research grants totaling $18.9 million.  Nearly $16 million of that total was awarded by the National Institutes of Health for investigations into the genetic and environmental determinants of hypertension, characterization of coronary-prone pedigrees, heart attack and stroke deaths in Utah families and other subjects.

Dr. Williams developed effective new tools for evaluating and helping families with strong familial predisposition to early coronary disease, stroke, hypertension, diabetes, breast cancer and morbid obesity.  These tools include:  detailed family history data collection and quantitative scoring methods, biochemical and physiological tests for preclinical disease detection and emerging DNA tests for genes related to heart-related illnesses.  He was the author of more than 200 scientific publications and he chaired numerous committees for the National Institutes of Health.

Dr. Williams suffered an untimely death at age 54 on September 2, 1998 in the crash of a Swissair jetliner off the coast of Nova Scotia.  He was en route to Geneva for a World Health Organization meeting, where he was to chair the proceedings of an international group of scientists from 30 countries who participate in "MED PED", a global public health project he designed to combine new discoveries in genetics and computerized genealogical tools to trace medical pedigrees.  Despite the sudden and tragic death of Dr. Williams, the CVG faculty and staff were left with the wonderful legacy of his work.  The memory of his energy, enthusiasm, vision and goodness continues to inspire and motivate the faculty and staff of CVG and, indeed, scientists throughout the world.  The goal of CVG is to pursue and expand Dr. Williams' dream of vanquishing atherosclerosis, the number one cause of death in the US and throughout the Western world.