Kevin Davies

Kevin Davies, PhD, is a British scientific editor and author specializing in the medical and societal implications of major breakthroughs in genetic technologies. His areas of expertise include gene editing/CRISPR, genomic medicine, and his latest project – sickle cell disease.

Davies is the author or co-author of a clutch of popular science books including Cracking the Genome and The $1,000 Genome. He was invited by Nobel laureate Jim Watson to serve as a co-author of DNA: The Story of the Genetic Revolution. In 2017, he won a Guggenheim Fellowship to write a new book on CRISPR and genome editing. The result is EDITING HUMANITY: The CRISPR Revolution and the New Era of Genome Editing, published in 2020 by Pegasus Books. Davies is a frequent commentator in the media on the medical and ethical implications of CRISPR Technology. He is currently working on a new book -- a biography of sickle cell disease, a sweeping account of the world’s most famous genetic mutation, from a century of structural racism to the cusp of a cure.

Davies has spent more than 30 years in science publishing. In 1992, he launched Nature Genetics (the first spin-off journal from Nature). In 2018, he created The CRISPR Journal, the first scientific journal devoted to gene editing (published by Mary Ann Liebert Inc.) He has also served as editor-in-chief of Cell Press, the founding editor of Bio-IT World magazine, and publisher of Chemical & Engineering News.

Davies graduated with a degree in biochemistry from Oxford University and took his PhD in human genetics from St Mary's Hospital Medical School in London. After a pair of postdoctoral fellowships at MIT and Harvard Medical School, he hung up his lab coat for the last time, joining the editorial staff of Nature. Davies is an acclaimed keynote speaker, mixing cutting-edge science news and an effortless ability to tailor his talk for different audiences, interspersed with his distinctly British sense of humor. He lives in Washington DC.