David Beratan

David N. Beratan is the R.J. Reynolds Distinguished Professor of Chemistry and Professor of Biochemistry and Physics at Duke University. He earned a B.S. in Chemistry from Duke University in 1980 and a Ph.D. in Chemistry from the California Institute of Technology in 1986. Beratan has held his professorial appointments in the Department of Chemistry since 2001, the Department of Biochemistry since 2002, and the Department of Physics since 2023. He is affiliated with Duke's programs in Computational Biology and Bioinformatics, Structural Biology and Biophysics, Nanosciences, and Phononics.

Beratan develops theoretical approaches to understand the function of complex molecular and macromolecular systems. His research specializations include the molecular underpinnings of energy harvesting and charge transport in biology, the mechanism of solar energy capture and conversion in man-made structures, charge conductivity in nucleic acids and photochemical DNA repair in extremophiles, C-H bond activation by copper oxygenase enzymes, charge flow in bacterial appendages, theoretical foundations for inverse molecular design, exploitation of molecular diversity, infrared excitation to manipulate electron transport, and optical signatures of molecular chirality influencing charge transport. Additional interests encompass photosynthetic energy transduction, electron tunneling pathways in proteins, interplays of chirality and spin in chiral assemblies, electron bifurcation theory, Dexter energy transfer pathways, nanocrystal-based diodes for solar energy conversion, de novo protein energy transducing biomachines, multidimensional spectroscopy with machine learning for electronic coupling pathways, enzymatic energy conversion, DNA repair under extreme conditions, biomolecular-noble gas interactions, bioinformatics and computational biology, biological electron transfer and catalysis, and bioinspired materials for electron and proton conduction membranes. Beratan has received major awards including the 2024 Irving Langmuir Award in Chemical Physics from the American Chemical Society, election as a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2024, the 2023 Royal Society of Chemistry Horizon Prize for discoveries in electron bifurcation reactions in flavoproteins, the 2020 PNAS Cozzarelli Prize, the 2019 Royal Society of Chemistry Bourke Award, the 2018 Murray S. Goodman Memorial Prize, the 2015 Charles H. Herty Medal, and the 2013 Feynman Prize in Nanoscience for theory. He is a fellow of the American Chemical Society, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Physical Society, and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. His key publications include 'Universal free-energy landscape produces efficient and reversible electron bifurcation' (PNAS, 2020) and 'Predicting Dexter Energy Transfer Interactions from Molecular Orbital Overlaps' (Journal of Physical Chemistry C, 2020). Beratan's contributions have shaped theoretical chemistry and molecular biophysics, evidenced by over 27,000 citations and an h-index of 84.

Professional Email: david.beratan@duke.edu