Kay Davies

Dame Kay Elizabeth Davies, DBE, FRS, FMedSci (née Partridge; born 1 April 1951) is a British geneticist. She is Dr Lee's Professor of Anatomy at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Hertford College, Oxford. She is director of the Medical Research Council (MRC) functional genetics unit, a governor of the Wellcome Trust and a director of the Oxford Centre for Gene Function. Her research group has an international reputation for work on Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD). In the 1980s, she developed a test which allowed for the screening of foetuses whose mothers have a high risk of carrying DMD.

Davies was educated at the Gig Mill School, Stourbridge County High School for Girls, Somerville College, Oxford and Wolfson College, Oxford.

She was awarded a Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1976 for research on the structure and function of chromatin from the slime mould Physarum polycephalum.

Davies' research group has an international reputation for work on Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD). In the 1980s, she developed a test which allowed for the screening of foetuses whose mothers have a high risk of carrying DMD. DMD occurs when the dystrophin protein fails to express in muscle cells due to a mutation in the gene which codes for the protein. In 1989 Davies discovered that the utrophin protein has similar properties to dystrophin and has since shown in mouse models that up regulation of the former protein in muscle cells can compensate for the absence of latter.

Davies is currently collaborating with European Research Council fellow Dr Peter Oliver investigating neurodegenerative and movement disorders.

Davies is director of the Medical Research Council (MRC) functional genetics unit, a governor of the Wellcome Trustand, with Frances Ashcroft and Peter Donnelly is a director of the Oxford Centre for Gene Function. She is an Executive Editor of the journal Human Molecular Genetics.

She has published more than 400 papers and won numerous awards for her work. She has been a Governor of the Wellcome Trust since 2008 and became Deputy Chairman in 2013. She was the recipient of the Women in to Science and Engineering (WISE) Lifetime Achievement Award in 2014.

Davies was a founding Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences (FMedSci) in 1998, and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2003. Already a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE), she was advanced to Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in the 2008 New Year Honours.

She is an Honorary Fellow, Somerville College, University of Oxford. She gave the inaugural Rose Lecture at Kingston University in 2012 and delivered the Harveian Oration at the Royal College of Physicians in 2013. She was appointed a Patron of The SMA Trust in September 2016.

Davies continued to work with her former husband, Stephen G. Davies, on scientific projects, even after their separation in 2000. Their son is studying Biology at the University of Edinburgh.