Founder - Professor Ben Davis
Ben got his B.A. (1993) and D.Phil. (1996) from the University of Oxford. He then spent two years as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Toronto, exploring protein chemistry and biocatalysis. In 1998 he returned to the UK to take up a lectureship at the University of Durham, and in 2001 moved to the University of Oxford and received a fellowship at Pembroke College, Oxford. Ben’s group’s research centres on chemical biology with an emphasis on carbohydrates and proteins, in particular inhibitor design, protein engineering, drug delivery, molecular modeling, molecular biology and glycoscience. Their work has received the RSC Meldola Medal and Prize, the RSC Carbohydrate Award, a DTI Smart Award, a Mitzutani Foundation for Glycoscience Award, the Philip Leverhulme Prize and the Royal Society’s Mullard Prize and Medal.
Ben is co-founder of Glycoform, a biotechnology company aimed at exploiting the therapeutic potential of glycoproteins. In 2003, Technology Review, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s magazine of innovation, named him as among the 100 top young innovators in the world. In 2006, he was awarded one of the RSC’s Corday-Morgan Medals and Prizes and was the recipient of the International Association for Protein Structure Analysis and Proteomics Young Investigator Award.