Ceri Davies is head of global CNS drug discovery at Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Ltd which is responsible for discovering and developing new CNS medicines up to clinical proof of efficacy.

Ceri holds a BSc and PhD from the University of Bristol and has experience of running an independent academic laboratory at the University of Edinburgh before he left academia 18 years ago to join the pharmaceutical industry at Organon Laboratories in Scotland. Since then he has worked at SmithKline Beecham and GlaxoSmithKline in the UK, Italy and Singapore where he has led a number of research departments responsible for both preclinical and clinical drug discovery projects covering a range of psychiatric and neurological disorders.

He is a visiting Honorary Professor in Neuroscience and Biomedical Systems at The University of Glasgow and has served as a member of both the Medical Research Council and The Wellcome Trust Neuroscience and Mental Health and Molecular and Cellular Neuroscience Boards. He has published over 80 full papers in peer reviewed scientific journals and has been awarded AJ Clark and Novartis Prizes by the British Pharmacological Society in recognition of his pharmacological expertise.