Michael S. Davis, DVM PhD Dipl ACVIM
Dr. Davis grew up outside of Houston, TX, and from an early age has had an interest in exercise physiology, particularly in animals. He earned his veterinary degree in 1988 from Texas A&M University, and practiced in various areas throughout Texas for 4 years before moving to the Marion DuPont Scott Equine Medical Center in Virginia to become board certified in veterinary internal medicine. He earned a PhD in physiology from Johns Hopkins University in 1999, and has been employed as a research physiologist and clinical expert in exercise physiology at Oklahoma State University since 1998, where he was recently named to the John Oxley Endowed Chair in Equine Sports Medicine.
Dr. Davis began studying the physiology of ultra-endurance racing sled dogs in 2000 at the request of the Iditarod Trail Committee, in order to improve the health and well-being of these athletes. Since then, Dr. Davis and his research team have defined the pathogenesis and identified preventative methods for exercise-induced stomach ulcers, characterized the effects of exercise in cold conditions on lung function, and uncovered iconoclastic metabolic pathways that permit the unprecedented exercise endurance of dogs running in the Iditarod and similar events. These studies have been and continue to be conducted under extreme environmental conditions of the winter Alaskan interior, far from traditional laboratory facilities.
Dr. Davis has been recognized as the Sigma Xi Young Investigator at OSU in 2004 and the Oscar Schalm Endowed Lecturer at the University of California-Davis in 2005, and was awarded the Pfizer Award for Research Excellence in 2005 and the Regents Distinguished Research Award from Oklahoma State University in 2008. He is the senior author on over 40 publications related to stress physiology in companion animals.