Dr. Gareth Davies grew up in Wales. He received his bachelor’s degree in Biological Sciences from the University of Plymouth, UK. He then completed his Ph.D. in Human Molecular Genetics from the University of Cardiff in the UK. Dr. Davies has held Post-Doctoral and Fellowship positions at the University of Oxford, the National Cancer Institute of the NIH and the Medical College of Wisconsin.

He has held faculty positions at South Dakota State University where he was a teacher of the year, the University of South Dakota School of Medicine and as a Visiting Professor at the Vrije University in Amsterdam in the Netherlands.

In 2007 Dr. Davies was a co-founder of the Avera Institute of Human Genetics in Sioux Falls, South Dakota where he served as Scientific Director and then Chief Scientific Officer until 2020. His research has resulted in the publication of over one hundred peer reviewed manuscripts in journals which include Science, Nature, and Nature Genetics.