William Sean Davidson is an American biochemist and structural biologist. He is the Mary M. Emery Pathology Endowed Chair and a professor in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the University of Cincinnati, where he directs the Center for Lipid and Arteriosclerosis Science. His research examines the molecular structure of apolipoproteins and their role in high-density lipoprotein (HDL) metabolism and cardiovascular disease.
Education Davidson received a B.S. in biochemistry, with a minor in biology, from Indiana University Bloomington in 1990. He earned a Ph.D. in biochemistry from the Medical College of Pennsylvania (now part of Drexel University) in 1994, studying under Michael C. Phillips, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign under Ana Jonas.Curriculum Vitae provided by the subject.
Career Davidson joined the University of Cincinnati as an assistant professor in 1998 and was promoted to professor in 2006. He has served as the department's Vice Chair for Research since 2014 and as Division Chief of Experimental Pathology since 2016, and has directed the Center for Lipid and Arteriosclerosis Science since 2008. In 2026, he was named the Mary M. Emery Pathology Endowed Chair.
Research Davidson's laboratory uses cross-linking mass spectrometry to study the structure of apolipoproteins, proteins not easily characterized by conventional methods such as X-ray crystallography or NMR. His group has produced structural models of apolipoprotein A-I and A-IV and maintains the HDL Proteome Watch, a database of published HDL proteomics data. As of 2026, he had authored or co-authored more than 170 peer-reviewed publications, cited over 15,000 times according to Google Scholar. His research has been continuously funded by the National Institutes of Health since 1999, including as principal investigator or co-investigator on multiple concurrent R01 and program project (P01) grants.
Personal life Davidson was born in 1967 in Carmel, Indiana, the oldest of three siblings. At university at Indiana University Bloomington, he met Michelle Baran, who he later married in 1996. They have two children: a son who now works as a librarian in Queens, New York, and a daughter working in forensic facial identification in the UK. Davidson and his wife live in West Chester, OH with their golden retriever and two cats. In his spare time, he enjoys cycling, sci-fi TV shows, and repairing his vintage Mustang.
Editorial and professional service Davidson has served on the editorial board of the Journal of Lipid Research, including as an associate editor since 2019, and previously served on the editorial board of the Journal of Biological Chemistry from 2005 to 2016. He co-founded the HDL Workshop, an international research meeting, in 2009 together with Mary Sorci-Thomas and Jay Heinecke, and currently serves as the organization's treasurer.
Awards and honors Fellow, American Heart Association Council on Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology (1998) Peter Dolphin Award, International HDL Research Awards Program (2004) Special Recognition Award in Arteriosclerosis, American Heart Association (2022) Faculty Excellence Award, University of Cincinnati (2022) Graduate Student Mentor Award, University of Cincinnati (2025) George Rieveschl Jr. Award for Distinguished Scientific Research, University of Cincinnati (2026)
Selected publications
References