Zachary J. “Zack” Williams

MD/PhD candidate, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine

Information

Zack Williams is an MD/PhD candidate in the Neuroscience Graduate Program and Department of Hearing and Speech Sciences at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. He is also an affiliate of the Vanderbilt University Frist Center for Autism and Innovation and Vanderbilt Kennedy Center. Zack's research focuses on developing novel tools to measure different forms of decreased sound tolerance (i.e., hyperacusis, misophonia, and phonophobia) in both autistic and non-autistic adults, and his ongoing dissertation study seeks to study these sound tolerance conditions transdiagnostically using a combination of self-report, psychophysical, audiologic, and electrophysiologic measures. He is an author of multiple novel assessment tools for misophonia and other sound tolerance conditions, including the Duke Misophonia Questionnaire (DMQ), Duke-Vanderbilt Misophonia Screening Questionnaire (DVMSQ), Multidimensional Inventory for Sound Tolerance in Adults (MIST-A), and Diagnostic Interview for Sound Sensitivity Syndromes (DISSS). Additional research interests include the assessment and treatment of co-occurring physical and mental health problems in autistic adults, relationships between sensory differences and health-relevant outcomes in autistic people, and the development of novel questionnaires to assess core and associated features of the autism phenotype.