Kay Davies

Professor Dame Kay Davies, PhD, DBE FMedSci FRS is the Professor of Genetics and co-Director of the MDUK Oxford Neuromuscular Centre in the Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics at the University of Oxford, UK. She received a BA degree in Chemistry and a graduate PhD degree in Biochemistry from the University of Oxford. She was appointed Professor of Genetics in 1996 and then appointed Dr Lee’s Professor of Anatomy at the University of Oxford in 1998. She established and was Director of the MRC Functional Genomics Unit 1999-2017 and co-founded the Oxford Centre of Gene Function in 2000, a new institute going from genetic association in human disease to function in the whole organism. Her research interests lie in the molecular analysis and development of treatments for human genetic diseases, particularly Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD), and the application of genomics for the analysis of neurological disorders.  She has published more than 400 papers, won numerous awards for her work and co-founded companies to translate her work to the clinic. Professor Dame Davies is a founding Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences and a Fellow of the Royal Society. She was appointed Governor of the Wellcome Trust in 2008 and became Deputy Chair 2013-17.  She chairs the Genome England Clinical Interpretation Partnership in the UK and is a member of the GRL Board at the Sanger Institute. She was made Dame Commander of the British Empire for services to science in 2008.