Ben Davis got his B.A. (1993) and D.Phil. (1996) from the University of Oxford. During this time he learned the beauty of carbohydrate chemistry under the supervision of Professor George Fleet. He then spent 2 years as a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Professor Bryan Jones at the University of Toronto, exploring protein chemistry and biocatalysis.

In 1998 he returned to the U.K. to take up a lectureship at the University of Durham. In the autumn of 2001 he moved to the Dyson Perrins Laboratory, University of Oxford and received a fellowship at Pembroke College, Oxford.

His group's research centers on chemical biology with an emphasis on carbohydrates and proteins. In particular, the group's interests encompass synthesis and methodology, inhibitor design, protein engineering, drug delivery, molecular modeling, molecular biology, and glycoscience.

This work has received the 1999 RSC Meldola medal and prize, the 2001 RSC Carbohydrate Award sponsored by Syngenta, an AstraZeneca Strategic Research Award, a DTI Smart Award, a Mitzutani Foundation for Glycoscience Award, the 2002 Philip Leverhulme Prize, the 2005 Royal Society Mullard Prize and Medal, the RSC 2005 Corday-Morgan Medal and in 2006 the International Association for Protein Structure Analysis and Proteomics Young Investigator Award.

In 2005 Ben Davis was appointed to the Editorial Board of Carbohydrate Research and elected the UK representative and secretary of the European Carbohydrate Organisation. In 2006 he was appointed to the Editorial Boards of Chemical Biology and Drug Design and Organic and Biomolecular Chemistry.

Ben Davis is co-founder with Dr. Antony J. Fairbanks of Glycoform, a small biotechnology company aimed at exploiting the therapeutic potential of glycoproteins. In 2003 he has been named as among the 100 top young innovators in the world by Technology Review, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)'s magazine of innovation.

In 2008, he was awarded the Wain Medal for Chemical Biology and was the first UK recipient of the American Chemical Society's Horace S. Isbell Award.

In 2009 he was the recipient of the Elsevier Carbohydrate Research Award for Creativity in Carbohydrate Chemistry, he holds a Novartis Lectureship Award and was the first recipient of the RSC Norman Heatley Award for inter- and multi-disciplinary research between chemistry and the life sciences.

Last updated: 30-9-09