Simon Davy's Biography

Simon Davy, Associate Professor, Head of School, Victoria University of Wellington

Assoc. Prof. Simon Davy is Head of the School of Biological Sciences, Victoria University of Wellington (VUW). He obtained his PhD in 1994 from the University of Wales, Bangor, in the area of cnidarian-dinoflagellate symbiosis. After this, he held postdoctoral fellowships at the Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution and the University of Sydney. From 1999-2003 he held a faculty position at the University of Plymouth, after which he moved to VUW. His research group focuses on molecular, cellular, physiological and ecological aspects of coral-dinoflagellate symbiosis, as well as coral disease. He has strong interests in host-symbiont signaling, carbon and nitrogen metabolism, and coral bleaching physiology, and is currently using a range of metabolomic and proteomic approaches to understand these processes. He has authored ~70 publications, including the textbook The Biology of Coral Reefs (Oxford). He is also Vice-president of the International Symbiosis Society, a topic editor for Coral Reefs, and the reviews editor for Frontiers in Microbiology (Microbial Symbioses)."