Clay Pierce is the Assistant Leader for Fisheries of the Iowa Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit at Iowa State University. He supervises graduate students and does aquatic ecology and fisheries research in the lakes, rivers, and streams of Iowa. He teaches courses in Stream Ecology and Fisheries Science. Clay is a native of Minnesota, and received his Bachelors degree at Mankato State University, his Masters degree at the University of Kentucky, and his Ph.D. at the University of Maryland. He was a postdoctoral researcher at McGill University and an assistant professor at Eastern Illinois University before assuming his present position in 1993.