What makes an expert?

Mark Williams, Ph. D.

After a pandemic-influenced delay, the popular Institute for Human and Machine Cognition (IHMC) Lecture Series returns on March 3 with an expert look at how elite performance is built.

It’s a subject that will be explored by Mark Williams, Ph.D., a senior research scientist at the IHMC campus in Pensacola. Williams’ experience with excellence has a grounding in sports, but his expertise in cognitive science informs the way his work has progressed.

Williams, a Welsh native, was a youth international soccer player who also played professionally and semi-professionally. His undergraduate degree is in sport and exercise science from Manchester Metropolitan University in Manchester, England; his doctorate is in cognitive science at the University of Liverpool.

“Essentially, I’m interested in what makes performers elite in any professional domain,” Williams said. “A lot of my work started off in sport, but the work I do for IHMC is using similar methods and measures but looking more at expertise in military realms, such as special ops, NASA, Air Force and Navy, and looking at how do we best select trainees into these professional domains.”

He has been on the faculty at the University of Liverpool, the University of Sydney in Australia and the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, where he was professor and chairman of the Department of Health, Kinesiology and Recreation. He also has been a visiting professor at other universities, including Florida State University, where he met Ken Ford, Ph.D., the CEO of IHMC.

“All of us at IHMC are pleased to see the Evening Lecture Series reconvening with a talk by our own Mark Williams,” Ford said. “It will be a pleasure to once again welcome the community into our facility.”

For his lecture, Williams will talk about the science of what differentiates an expert and what role nature and nurture play in that.

“Do we become experts through practice on a single task or is there some aspect of generalized ability and transferability across a skill?” Williams said.

Williams has worked in medicine, law enforcement, aviation and other areas. One of his main areas of interest is anticipation and decision-making, and how those are impacted by stressors such as anxiety, fatigue, workload and hot and cold environments, he said.

Williams, a father of three sons, said he is very active physically and still enjoys playing soccer, along with working out, travel and “just being outdoors.”

He also is an author, mentor and peer reviewer for more than 50 journals and 15 funding agencies in North America, Europe and Asia. He is a Fellow of the British Psychological Society, National Academy of Kinesiology, British Association of Sport and Exercise Science and European College of Sports Sciences.

The lecture takes place at IHMC’s Ocala campus at 15 SE Osceola Ave. and begins with a reception at 5:30 p.m. Seating will be limited to accommodate social distancing. To learn more, go to www.ihmc.us/lectures.