Paul Clemons

Paul Clemons is Director, Computational Chemical Biology Research for The Broad Institute’s Chemical Biology Program. Clemons and his team use quantitative measurement, computational, and visualization techniques to enable systematic use of small molecules to explore biology, especially disease biology. In collaboration with biologists, Clemons’ team helps understand the consequences of small-molecule action on cells, particularly using multiple readouts, such as gene-expression profiles or profiles based on cellular imaging. With chemists, Clemons helps to identify the consequences of synthetic chemistry decisions on small-molecule performance, with the goal of developing optimal small-molecule screening collections. Current research activities in the Clemons group include quantifying chemical diversity of small-molecule collections, use of small molecules to profile biological processes in cellular contexts, and multidimensional analysis of large datasets resulting from small-molecule profiling.

As a graduate student, Clemons was one lead investigator in a large team effort to develop a “one-bead, one-stock solution” approach to chemical genetics, a precursor to the chemistry technology platform still in use by the Broad Institute. Upon receipt of his Ph.D., Clemons moved to the Harvard Institute of Chemistry & Cell Biology (ICCB), where he led additional technology development projects as well as conducting basic research to bring computational approaches to chemical-genetics research. In the context of the NCI’s Initiative for Chemical Genetics, first at ICCB and later at Broad, Clemons’ group had responsibilities for cheminformatics and high-throughput screening data-analysis, including creating the public small-molecule structure and data-analysis environment ChemBank.

Contact: pclemons@broadinstitute.org