About

I'm Noah Williams. I was born and raised in Whatcom County, Washington, spending most of my time around Ferndale and Bellingham.

My first technical projects were practical and mostly self-directed: hosting a Minecraft server, building an Iron Man MK01 suit from a trash can, designing environments and assets in Unity3D and Blender, and later attempting a more ambitious MK02 in CAD. Those projects gradually led me into programming, software development, and a series of independent and community projects.

For several years, much of that work centered on websites, software, and special-purpose tools for organizations and projects around me. In 2020, it led to an opportunity to speak at the Congreso de Educación Sistémica in Colombia. Several people I met there through systems thinking and cybernetics later advised me as I approached community-oriented work in Bellingham, including projects with local nonprofits and the development of the CARIN community platform. That work was later recognized with the Ken Gass Community Builder Award. At Western, I also served for two academic years on the Sustainability, Equity, and Justice Fund Council.

When I began at Western Washington University in fall 2024, I took a linguistics course called Language and Brain. It unexpectedly redirected much of my attention toward neuroscience. I had always been curious about the brain, in part because my older sister studied psychology and I grew up around her textbooks, and later through an interest in behavioral economics that developed alongside my work in interface and interaction design. Still, I had never expected neuroscience to become a serious area of study.

In early 2025, I met neuroscientist Christof Koch before a talk at Western. Coming from a background influenced by systems thinking, I asked him about consciousness and emergence. It was a fairly naive question, but the conversation helped guide the next year as I explored neuroscience as it exists today, how the field came to be, and what we actually know about the complex phenomena of the brain.

Since then, I've been steadily building my understanding of the brain through coursework, independent study, software, and exploratory research.

I'm now studying Psychology at Western Washington University, where I've completed a minor in Language & Cognition and am working toward a second in Behavioral Neuroscience.

What I'm Doing Now

Right now, I'm focused on understanding how neuroscience explains complex phenomena across scales, and on building tools that help explore those relationships.

Alongside that work, I'm writing and making videos about this 'multiscale problem' in neuroscience: how observations become models, how models relate to mechanisms, and how explanations connect across different levels of the brain.

Outside of that, I paint, and occasionally do standup and other bits for fun.

I would also like to credit Nicky Case, whose work shaped my understanding of the web as a place to explore ideas, play, and learn through interaction. I try to carry that spirit into my own work where I can, particularly inspired by The Evolution of Trust.

Additional Experience

A broader archive of professional, nonprofit, university, community, and independent work, including software development, web design, research tools, educational technology, and experimental projects.