Erik H. Williams, Ph.D.

Erik H. Williams, Ph.D. is the chief of the Atlantic Fisheries Branch within the Sustainable Fisheries Division of the NOAA's Southeast Fisheries Science Center.

Dr. Erik Williams earned his Bachelor's of Science from the University of Florida, his Master's of Science from the University of Rhode Island, and Ph.D. from the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Erik started his career with NOAA Fisheries at the Tiburon Laboratory in Tiburon, California in 1999. He soon transferred to the NOAA Beaufort Laboratory, the second oldest fisheries laboratory in the U.S., located in Beaufort, NC in 2000. Erik brought statistical catch-at-age stock assessment methods from the West Coast to the South Atlantic. This development progressed into the software package BAM (Beaufort Assessment Model) that remains in use today. Starting in 2006, Erik became the supervisor for the stock assessment group and soon the branch grew to include 25 staff. The Atlantic Fisheries Branch staff has comfortably shrunk to just five lead assessment scientists. Erik’s technical skills are fixated around computer programming, large database management, data manipulation, high performance computing, mathematical modeling, statistical analyses, and effective written and oral communications. Effective graphical communication is a personally favorite topic.