William did his BSc in Chemistry in University College Dublin (UCD) which he completed in 2011. He remained in UCD for his postgraduate studies and worked on the synthesis of vinyl sulfone-based protease inhibitors under the supervision of Prof. Paul Evans and completed his PhD in 2015. He continued his post-doctoral studies with Prof. Paul Evans in 2016. He joined the McGouran group for a post-doctoral position in Trinity College Dublin in 2017. He worked on the synthesis of a variety of activity-based probes for DNA-damage repair enzymes.