Rate My Professor Joe Williams

Joe Williams serves as Professor of Psychology and Chair of the Psychology Department at Illinois Wesleyan University, where he has been a faculty member for 20 years as recognized in 2024. His area of study is psychobiology, with research interests encompassing the biological and neural mechanisms of physical and social pain, the role of the hippocampus, amygdala, and frontal lobes in learning and memory, and the effects of alcohol on learning and memory. Williams also explores the relationship between hippocampal and frontal EEG activity and memory, the effects of pulsed radiofrequency on gene expression, and the role of the frontal lobes in processing social ostracism.

A key publication co-authored by Williams is "Pulsed radiofrequency modulates pain regulatory gene expression along the nociceptive pathway," published in Pain Physician in 2013, which investigated the molecular effects of pulsed radiofrequency in pain pathways using preclinical models in collaboration with researchers from Millennium Pain Center and Illinois State University. Williams actively mentors undergraduate students in research, supervising projects presented at the John Wesley Powell Student Research Conference. Notable recent student research under his guidance includes spinal cord stimulation and differential target multiplexed programming in the spared nerve injury model of neuropathic pain (2025), demonstrating superior efficacy of DTMP over traditional methods; the effects of buprenorphine, ketamine, and gabapentin on pain behaviors (2025); chronically recorded spinal ECAP thresholds in rats (2024); spinal cord stimulation in rat models of neuropathic pain (2022); and effects of phase polarity and charge balance of spinal cord stimulation (2019). His leadership extends to departmental administration, including chairing during the Psychology Department's 50th anniversary in 2011, and educational initiatives such as co-teaching the Creativity Scholars program and leading student immersion in Japan during Technos International Week in 2018.