Eric R. Williams earned his undergraduate degree from Northwestern University and later received his MFA from Columbia University's School of Film. He is a devoted family man, married with a daughter named Alex.
In addition to writing and directing feature length films, Williams has written an un-produced Columbo made-for-TV movie for Universal Studios and developed the pilot "Don't Try This at Home" for American Movie Classics. His script "Crystal Messiah" won the Writers Guild of America award for Best New Work in 2000 and was later developed in the Film Independent Producers Lab.
Williams' work has received numerous accolades, including the Ohio Arts Council Award for Individual Excellence in Screenwriting in 2009 for three of his scripts for "Voices from the Heartland". He co-wrote and co-directed the Ohio-based educational web series "What's the Problem?" in 2008, which received a regional Emmy Award in Interactive Media.
In 2010, Williams co-produced two international documentary series: the television series "Pepperpot" in Guyana and a web series "Tropical Disease: Chagas" in Ecuador. He is a professor at Ohio University's McClure School of Emerging Communication Technologies, where he has received several awards, including the University Professor Award for Excellence in Teaching, the Honors Tutorial College Distinguished Mentor Award, and was a finalist for the Presidential Teaching Award.
Williams' non-fiction work has been funded by various organizations, including the U.S. State Department, the National Institute for Health, the U.S. Agency for International Development, and the U.S. Department of Education. In 2015, he began working with the Game Research and Immersive Design (GRID) Lab at Ohio University, where he produces and directs Virtual Reality Cinema (cine-VR) and other emerging technologies.
In 2020, his cine-VR work "Lost Broken Alone" was a semi-finalist for the Real World XR Awards' Best use of Sound & Music in XR. The following year, his VR experience "For the Love of God" won the Best Virtual Reality Award in the New York Nil Gallery International Media Festival. Williams is also the co-founder and owner of a digital production company called The Blue Arm.
