The Pathologist Who Sees Teaching as Treatment

Dr. Ryan Williams has an unusual morning routine. Some days start with him explaining molecular biology to undergrads at 8 a.m. Others begin in a high-tech laboratory, where he's teaching machines to spot cancer cells that human eyes might miss. By lunch, he could be troubleshooting compliance issues or helping pathologists navigate complex cases from halfway around the world.

But when Williams talks about the future of medicine and education, he doesn't lead with the cutting-edge AI or the revolutionary diagnostic tools. He starts with a questionnaire his uncle filled out decades ago, and the high school teachers whose names he still remembers.

"They had this way of explaining very complex systems that was just unforgettable," Williams says during our conversation for the Juice Box News Podcast. "I can still see their faces."

The Doctor Who Doesn't See Patients

Williams' career trajectory reads like someone couldn't decide between multiple dream jobs—so he chose them all. MD. PhD. Chief Scientific Officer. Teaching professor. Each role feeds the others in ways that would make a traditional career counselor's head spin.

"I always wanted to treat patients," he admits. "But as a pathologist, I never really had that one-on-one interaction."

That's where students come in. They've become his patients in a sense, replacing the direct human connection he craved in medicine. Where a surgeon might see immediate results in the OR, Williams sees transformation unfold over semesters.

At Goldpath Labs, where he serves as Chief Scientific Officer, Williams is revolutionizing how we diagnose cancer. The lab specializes in digital pathology—converting traditional glass slides into high-resolution digital images that can be analyzed by specialists anywhere on Earth. No more shipping fragile specimens across continents. No more geographic lottery determining whether you get the best pathologist for your specific cancer.

"We're starting to tap into AI-assisted pathology as well," he explains. "The AI platforms help triage cases for our pathologists, so the most emergent cases are diagnosed and treated first."

The Mountain Climber's Dilemma

Ask Williams about his proudest educational moment, and he doesn't mention his dual doctorate or his residency at UCLA. Instead, his eyes light up talking about his first published research paper.

"I was no longer reading the textbook—I was writing the textbook," he recalls. "Other scientists, other students are going to read this and it will help them understand this process better."

But here's the thing about reaching those peaks: the climb is brutal. Williams watched friends complete entire careers while he was still in training. The combined MD-PhD path meant over a decade of formal education before he could even start his residency.

"You have to climb to the top of the mountain before you can really create," he says. "But you have to climb the mountain first."

This marathon mindset shapes how he mentors students. Having navigated multiple career transitions himself—clinician to researcher to educator to executive—he understands that careers rarely follow the neat flowcharts in guidance counselor offices.

ChatGPT and the Concept Revolution

When conversation turns to AI in education, Williams sidesteps the usual panic about cheating and shortcuts. He sees ChatGPT not as a threat but as a triage tool—much like the AI systems sorting cancer cases in his lab.

"Students need to harness that information to use it as a tool to help triage what is important and what might not be important," he argues. The key is using AI as a starting point, not an endpoint. Get a paragraph from ChatGPT about an unfamiliar topic? Great. Now dig deeper. Hit Google. Read primary sources. Or—radical thought—ask your professor.

"That's what they're there for," he adds with a laugh.

This philosophy extends to his entire teaching approach. In an age of infinite information, memorizing details is like trying to drink from a fire hose. Understanding concepts? That's the real game.

"You have to learn the terminology and the language in science and medicine," Williams acknowledges. "But really it's the concepts that you need to understand first and foremost."

The Quilt Theory of Education

Williams has a particular way of describing education that stops students in their tracks. Forget the ladder metaphor or the building blocks analogy. Education, he says, is like making a quilt.

"It might not make sense why you're learning one subject or another subject," he explains. Physics seems pointless when you're dreaming of medical school. Chemistry feels irrelevant to future neuroscientists. "But at the end of the day, when you look back at it, it all ties together."

Each piece—the brutal physics problems, the endless chemistry equations, the biology labs that run past midnight—creates something stronger than its parts. You can't just rip out the sections you don't like. The pattern only emerges when it's complete.

This holistic view comes from hard experience. His neuroscience PhD informs his pathology work. His medical training shapes his research. His teaching illuminates blind spots in the lab. Remove any piece, and the whole structure weakens.

The Internship Imperative

Beyond formal education, Williams evangelizes about something career centers often treat as an afterthought: internships and volunteer work.

"There are many career opportunities, and you may not be aware of them until you get into one," he notes. The classroom introduces concepts, but the workplace reveals possibilities.

His own path proves the point. Who grows up dreaming of becoming a digital pathologist? How many high school students list "Chief Scientific Officer of a cancer diagnostics lab" on their career surveys? These jobs exist at the intersection of multiple fields—invisible until you're already deep in the system.

The Future is Already Here

Williams' typical day would exhaust most mortals. Morning lecture. Lab work. Compliance issues. Remote teaching. Navigating pathologists through complex cases. Developing new assays. The variety isn't a bug—it's a feature.

"I like to combine and change things up throughout the day," he says. "I'm very lucky to have that opportunity."

Lucky might be understating it. Williams has positioned himself at the nexus of multiple revolutions. Digital pathology is transforming cancer diagnosis, making world-class expertise available to rural hospitals. AI is accelerating discovery, catching patterns humans miss. Remote education is democratizing access to knowledge.

But the real revolution might be conceptual. By treating students as patients and education as treatment, Williams brings a diagnostic precision to teaching. What symptoms indicate a struggling student? What interventions produce the best outcomes? How do you triage when everyone needs help?

Producing Knowledge, Not Just Consuming It

The shift from knowledge consumer to knowledge producer defines scientific maturity. But Williams warns against romanticizing the process. Most days aren't eureka moments—they're debugging sessions, failed experiments, and incremental progress.

"We need to acquire what's referred to as a fund of knowledge that you can apply your creative skills to later," he explains. "But you need to have a foundation to work off first."

That foundation isn't just facts and formulas. It's learning to think like a scientist. To see patterns. To question assumptions. To persist when nothing works the first (or fifth) time.

In his lab, AI doesn't replace pathologists—it amplifies their capabilities. In his classroom, ChatGPT doesn't replace learning—it accelerates the path to deeper understanding. The tools change, but the fundamental challenge remains: How do we transform curious students into knowledge creators?

The Teaching Treatment

Williams found something in education that eluded him in traditional medicine: immediate human impact. Every semester brings new patients—students struggling with organic chemistry, grappling with career choices, discovering passions they didn't know existed.

"I can see and have a more direct effect on their progression," he reflects. Where pathology offers delayed gratification—diagnoses that inform treatment decisions made by other doctors—teaching provides real-time feedback. The lightbulb moments. The career pivots. The transformation from confusion to clarity.

His students don't realize they're learning from someone simultaneously pushing the boundaries of cancer diagnosis. They might not know their professor spends afternoons training AI to spot malignancies or evenings developing assays that will save lives. But they benefit from the integration—real-world examples, cutting-edge context, and most importantly, proof that careers can be as varied as the quilts Williams describes.

Beyond the Microscope

As our conversation winds down, Williams returns to those inspirational teachers from his youth. The ones who made complex systems digestible. Who showed him that science wasn't just about memorizing facts but understanding the world.

Now he's paying it forward, one concept at a time. In lecture halls, he breaks down molecular biology into comprehensible pieces. In the lab, he translates cancer's complexity into digital data that saves lives. Across both worlds, he demonstrates that the best careers aren't always the ones that fit in neat boxes.

"You don't realize how important it is until you step back at the end and see the big picture," Williams says about education. The same could be said about his career—a unique quilt of medicine, research, technology, and teaching that only makes sense when you see how the pieces connect.

Somewhere, a student is struggling with organic chemistry, wondering why they need to learn this. Somewhere else, a patient is getting a faster cancer diagnosis because of digital pathology. In Williams' world, these aren't separate stories. They're different chapters of the same book—one he's still writing, one student and one slide at a time.

After all, someone needs to teach the next generation how to climb mountains. They just need to know the view from the top is worth it.

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