Clay Small is an evolutionary genomicist who studies the genetic underpinnings of traits in vertebrates, especially teleost fishes. He conducts research on genome and microbiome evolution in Bill Cresko's lab within the Institute of Ecology of Evolution and has been teaching and developing curricula for the Knight Campus Bioinformatics and Genomics Master's Program (BGMP) since 2014.

Clay received his B.S. in Zoology from the University of Idaho in 2003. After working as a wildlife ecologist for a few years, he began graduate study at Texas A&M University under renowned evolutionary geneticist, Adam Jones. His dissertation work on the evolution of reproductive genes (particularly those associated with male pregnancy in seahorses and their relatives) coincided with the advent of next-generation sequencing. As a result, Clay was well-acquainted with genomics and bioinformatics upon receiving his Ph.D. in 2012. 

Since joining the Cresko Lab at the University of Oregon in 2012, Clay has enjoyed working on a variety of genomics research projects and teaching graduate students about biology, R, statistical inference and data visualization.