Christofer Clemente
Christofer J. Clemente is an Australian scientist specialising in biomechanics. He is a Research Fellow in the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Queensland and in 2011 was awarded a grant of A$375,000 for "Design of a biologically inspired running and climbing robotic lizard" by the Australian Research Council.
He has a B.Sc. and Ph.D. from the University of Western Australia, his doctoral thesis being on "Evolution of Locomotion in Australian Varanid lizards : Ecomorphological and ecophysiological considerations". He has held post-doctoral positions at Cambridge and Harvard.
In October 2013 he appeared on BBC Radio 4's The Museum of Curiosity. His hypothetical donation to this fictional museum was "a lizard popping a wheelie": he explained that when a dragon lizard reaches a certain running speed its front legs lift off the ground because they cannot match the speed of the back legs, so it acquires a bipedal gait, analogous to a bicycle's wheelie.
