Lance E. Davidson, PhD

Lance E. Davidson, Ph.D., is a Research Assistant Professor in Cardiovascular Genetics at the University of Utah School of Medicine. As an obesity researcher and exercise physiologist, his research interests include investigating the health benefits of obesity reduction, specifically the long term effects of bariatric surgery in severely obese individuals, and determining optimal exercise prescriptions for improving metabolic health and physical performance in aging and obese individuals.

Dr. Davidson received bachelors and masters degrees in physical education and exercise science from Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. He obtained his doctorate in exercise physiology from Queen’s University in Ontario, Canada, where he conducted several randomized controlled exercise intervention trials assessing the effects of exercise on insulin resistance and physical function in middle-to-older aged individuals with diabetes and abdominal obesity. He received further training in NIH-funded post-doctoral fellowships at the New York Obesity Research Center, Columbia University, New York, and at the Division of Cardiovascular Genetics, University of Utah. He has been awarded several faculty development awards, including a Translational Comparative Effectiveness Research (TCER) Scholarship and a research career development (K12) award from the University of Utah’s NIH-funded Center for Clinical and Translational Science (CCTS), through which he is obtaining an additional degree in clinical investigations. His current research focus has been on the acute and long-term effects of bariatric surgery on body composition and metabolic health in severe obesity, including work on several large longitudinal cohort studies such as the Longitudinal Assessment of Bariatric Surgeries (LABS) Trial and the Utah Obesity Study. He is also researching mechanisms for the rapid remission of diabetes after gastric bypass surgery. Dr. Davidson is an active member of the Obesity Society.