Rate My Professor William Clemons

William M. Clemons, Jr. is the Arthur and Marian Hanisch Memorial Professor of Biochemistry in the Division of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering at the California Institute of Technology. He earned a B.S. in biochemistry from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in 1995 and a Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of Utah in 2000, where he worked under Professor Venki Ramakrishnan. During his graduate studies, he spent two years as a visiting scientist at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England, contributing to the team that solved the first atomic-resolution structure of the small ribosomal subunit. He completed postdoctoral research at Harvard Medical School with Professors Tom Rapoport and Steve Harrison, solving the structure of the protein translocation channel.

Clemons joined the Caltech faculty in 2005 as Assistant Professor of Chemistry, advancing to Assistant Professor of Biochemistry in 2007, Professor in 2013, and Hanisch Memorial Professor in 2021. His laboratory focuses on structural biology, using techniques such as X-ray crystallography to characterize membrane proteins and other critical biological systems. He has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences. Clemons also serves as a Program Officer in Science at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.