Huw M. L. Davies was born in Aberystwyth, Wales, UK. He received his B. Sc. degree from University College Cardiff, Wales (1977) and his Ph. D degree from the University of East Anglia (1980). After a post-doctoral position at Princeton University (1980-1983), he joined the faculty at Wake Forest University (1883-1995). After being promoted to full professor he moved to the University at Buffalo, the State University of New York (1995-2008) where he held the positions of UB Distinguished Professor and Larkin Professor of Organic Chemistry. In 2008 he moved to Emory University as the Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Chemistry.

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Professor Davies’ research emphasizes the development of new enantioselective synthetic methods and their applications in total synthesis and drug discovery. A major current theme of his program is catalytic asymmetric C–H functionalization by means of rhodium-carbene induced C–H insertion. He is currently the Director of the NSF Center for Chemical Innovation for Selective C-H Functionalization, which brings together 23 faculty members from 15 universities.

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Professor Davies is actively involved in the chemical community, having served as the Executive Officer of the 2003 National Organic Symposium, the 2005 Program Chair of the Gordon Conference on Heterocyclic Compounds, the 2005 Chair of the Organic Division of the American Chemical Society, and Co-Organizer of the ACS Organic Division Assistant Professor Symposium at the Fall ACS meeting since 2006. He is an Associate Editor for Chemical Society Reviews and has been as Associate Editor of Organic Reactions (2005-2010) and Organic Syntheses (2008-2016). Recent awards include the American Chemical Society Cope Scholar Award (2005), Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (2007), Fellow of the American Chemical Society (2009), Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2012), 2013 eEROS Reagent of the Year Award, Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors (2015), the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Research Award (2017), the Paul N. Rylander Award (2018) and the ACS Herbert C. Brown Award for Creative Research in Synthetic Methods (2019).