Clemens Hermann studied biochemistry at the University of Tübingen (Germany) and completed a master’s degree in immunology at the University of Cambridge (UK). In 2010, he started a Wellcome Trust-funded PhD in immunology in the group of Dr Louise Boyle at Cambridge, where he was involved in identifying TAPBPR as a novel peptide editor in the MHC class I presentation pathway.

After his PhD, Clemens transitioned to the field of Tuberculosis immunology as a postdoc in the laboratory of Prof Jonathan Blackburn at the University of Cape Town (South Africa). Here, he was part of a clinical study assessing the lung mucosal immune response in a controlled human lung challenge model in the context of infection with M. tuberculosis. He focused on the characterisation of the mucosal antibody response and the description of the proteome of bronchoalveolar lavage samples in patients along a gradient of disease susceptibility.

In 2020, Clemens joined the group of Prof Carolyn King at the University of Basel (Switzerland) as a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions postdoctoral fellow. His current work on Tuberculosis combines both mouse and human models to elucidate the relationship between specificity and function of lung mucosal antibody responses during infection with M. tuberculosis, with the goal of informing future vaccine development.