David N. Beratan, R.J. Reynolds Professor of Chemistry and Professor of Physics  

David N. Beratan

Office Location: 5311 French Science Center, Durham, NC 27708
Email Address: david.beratan@duke.edu
Web Page: http://people.chem.duke.edu/~beratan

Specialties:
Physical
Theory and Modeling
Biomolecular Structure and Function
Nanoscience and Materials

Education:
Ph.D., California Institute of Technology, 1986
B.S., Duke University, 1980

Research Description: Dr. Beratan is developing theoretical approaches to understand the function of complex molecular and macromolecular systems, including: the molecular underpinnings of energy harvesting and charge transport in biology; the mechanism of solar energy capture and conversion in man-made structures; the nature of charge conductivity in naturally occurring nucleic acids and in synthetic constructs, including the photochemical repair of damaged DNA in extremophiles; CH bond activation by copper oxygenase enzymes; the flow of charge in bacterial appendages on the micrometer length scale; the theoretical foundations for inverse molecular design - the property driven discovery of chemical structures with optimal properties; the exploitation of molecular diversity in the mapping of molecular and materials "space"; the use of infra-red excitation to manipulate electron transport through molecules; the optical signatures of molecular chirality and the influence of chirality on charge transport. Prof. Beratan is affiliated with the Departments of Chemistry, Biochemistry, Physics, as well as Duke's programs in Computational Biology and Bioinformatics, Structural Biology and Biophysics, Nanosciences, and Phononics.

Recent Publications   (More Publications)

  1. Terai, K; Parker, KA; Smith, AJ; Beratan, DN, Hopping mediated transport between finite pools of redox proteins., The Journal of chemical physics, vol. 162 no. 21 (June, 2025), pp. 215103 [doi]  [abs].
  2. Jin, T; Zhang, Z; He, S; Kaledin, AL; Xu, Z; Liu, Y; Zhang, P; Beratan, DN; Lian, T, Shell Thickness and Heterogeneity Dependence of Triplet Energy Transfer between Core-Shell Quantum Dots and Adsorbed Molecules., Journal of the American Chemical Society, vol. 147 no. 19 (May, 2025), pp. 16282-16292 [doi]  [abs].
  3. Sun, K; Kang, M; Nuomin, H; Schwartz, G; Beratan, DN; Brown, KR; Kim, J, Quantum simulation of spin-boson models with structured bath., Nature communications, vol. 16 no. 1 (April, 2025), pp. 4042 [doi]  [abs].
  4. Widel, ZXW; Alatis, JA; Stephenson, RH; Mastrocinque, F; Wilcox, AC; Bullard, G; Olivier, J-H; Bai, Y; Zhang, P; Beratan, DN; Therien, MJ, Fluence-Dependent Photoinduced Charge Transfer Dynamics in Polymer-Wrapped Semiconducting Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes., Journal of the American Chemical Society, vol. 146 no. 45 (November, 2024), pp. 31169-31176 [doi]  [abs].
  5. Schultz, JD; Parker, KA; Therien, MJ; Beratan, DN, Efficiency Limits of Energy Conversion by Light-Driven Redox Chains., Journal of the American Chemical Society, vol. 146 no. 47 (November, 2024), pp. 32805-32815 [doi]  [abs].

Highlight:
Dr. Beratan is developing theoretical approaches to understand the function of complex molecular and macromolecular systems, including: the molecular underpinnings of energy harvesting and charge transport in biology; the mechanism of solar energy capture and conversion in man-made structures; the nature of charge conductivity in naturally occurring nucleic acids and in synthetic constructs, including the photochemical repair of damaged DNA in extremophiles; CH bond activation by copper oxygenase enzymes; the flow of charge in bacterial appendages on the micrometer length scale; the theoretical foundations for inverse molecular design - the property driven discovery of chemical structures with optimal properties; the exploitation of molecular diversity in the mapping of molecular and materials "space"; the use of infra-red excitation to manipulate electron transport through molecules; the optical signatures of molecular chirality and the influence of chirality on charge transport. Prof. Beratan is affiliated with the Departments of Chemistry, Biochemistry, Physics, as well as Duke's programs in Computational Biology and Bioinformatics, Structural Biology and Biophysics, Nanosciences, and Phononics.  

Current Ph.D. Students   (Former Students)

  • Goke Ojewole  
  • Zheng Ma  
  • Chaoren Liu  
  • Chetan Rupakheti  
  • Ruibin Liu  
  • Gary Zhang  
  • Jiaxing Lin  
  • Nicholas Polizzi  
  • Yves Wang  
  • Nan Jiang  
Postdocs Mentored

  • Agostino Migliore (2013/01-present)  
  • Shoresh Shafai (2013/01-present)  
  • David Minh (2011 - 2013)  
  • Julia Contreras-Garcia (2009 - 2011)  
  • Aaron Virshup (2009/12-present)  
  • Aleksey Kuznetsov (2009-2013)  
  • Elizabeth Hatcher (2006-2007)  
  • Christopher Rinderspacher (2007 - 2009)  
  • Ravindra Venkatramani (2006-2012)  
  • Balamurugan Desinghu (2006 - 2010)  
  • Xiangqian Hu (2005-2011)  
  • Alexander Balaeff (2005-2012)  
  • Gerard Zuber (2004 - 2008)  
  • Shahar Keinan (2004 - 2011)  
  • Ilya Balabin (2004 - 2009)