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
Office Phone: (919) 660-1526
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.

Teaching (Fall 2023):

  • Chem 190fs.01, Special topics in chemistry Synopsis
    Lsrc d243, TuTh 03:05 PM-04:20 PM
  • Chem 295.01, Intro to research ind. study Synopsis
    Ffsc 4233, F 11:45 AM-01:00 PM

Recent Publications   (More Publications)

  1. Sun, K; Fang, C; Kang, M; Zhang, Z; Zhang, P; Beratan, DN; Brown, KR; Kim, J, Quantum Simulation of Polarized Light-Induced Electron Transfer with a Trapped-Ion Qutrit System., The Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters, vol. 14 no. 26 (July, 2023), pp. 6071-6077 [doi]  [abs].
  2. Terai, K; Yuly, JL; Zhang, P; Beratan, DN, Correlated particle transport enables biological free energy transduction., Biophysical Journal, vol. 122 no. 10 (May, 2023), pp. 1762-1771 [doi]  [abs].
  3. Rousseau, BJG; Migliore, A; Stanley, RJ; Beratan, DN, Adenine Fine-Tunes DNA Photolyase's Repair Mechanism., Journal of Physical Chemistry B, vol. 127 no. 13 (April, 2023), pp. 2941-2954 [doi]  [abs].
  4. Chowdhury, SN; Zhang, P; Beratan, DN, Interference between Molecular and Photon Field-Mediated Electron Transfer Coupling Pathways in Cavities., The Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters, vol. 13 no. 42 (October, 2022), pp. 9822-9828 [doi]  [abs].
  5. Liu, KT; Song, FF; Beratan, DN; Zhang, P, Suppressing the entanglement growth in matrix product state evolution of quantum systems through nonunitary similarity transformations, Physical Review B, vol. 106 no. 10 (September, 2022) [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)  
  • Christopher Rinderspacher (2007 - 2009)  
  • Elizabeth Hatcher (2006-2007)  
  • Balamurugan Desinghu (2006 - 2010)  
  • Ravindra Venkatramani (2006-2012)  
  • Xiangqian Hu (2005-2011)  
  • Alexander Balaeff (2005-2012)  
  • Gerard Zuber (2004 - 2008)  
  • Shahar Keinan (2004 - 2011)  
  • Ilya Balabin (2004 - 2009)