Rate My Professor R. David Britt

R. David Britt serves as the Winston Ko Chair, Distinguished Professor, and Chair of the Department of Chemistry at the University of California, Davis. He received his B.S. in Physics from North Carolina State University in 1978 and his Ph.D. in Physics from the University of California, Berkeley in 1988, with a thesis on Electron Spin Echo Spectroscopy of Photosynthesis under advisor Melvin P. Klein. Following his doctorate, Britt joined the UC Davis Chemistry faculty as an Assistant Professor in 1989, was promoted to Associate Professor in 1994, and to full Professor in 1997. He previously chaired the department from 2005 to 2008 and holds the Winston Ko Professorship in Science Leadership, endowed and renewed in 2023.

The Britt laboratory specializes in advanced electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) spectroscopy to probe the structure and function of redox-active metalloenzymes and radical enzymes involved in biological energy catalysis, such as the oxygen-evolving complex in photosystem II, [FeFe]-hydrogenases, nitrogenases, and radical S-adenosylmethionine (SAM) enzymes. The group operates the CalEPR facility, the largest EPR center on the West Coast with instruments from 9 to 263 GHz. Britt's publication record includes works in high-impact journals such as the Journal of the American Chemical Society ("The Radical S-Adenosyl-l-Methionine Enzyme HydE Forms an Fe(I)Fe(I) Dimer En Route to the [FeFe] Hydrogenase H-Cluster," 2025), Nature ("Random heteropolymers as enzyme mimics," 2026), and Science ("Multigas adsorption with single-site cooperativity in a metal–organic framework," 2025). His contributions to bioinorganic chemistry have earned awards including the ACS Alfred Bader Award in Bioinorganic or Bioorganic Chemistry (2022), election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2023), Royal Society of Chemistry Bioinorganic Chemistry Award (2019), International EPR Society Gold Medal (2014), and fellowships from AAAS (2012), RSC (2019), International EPR Society (2020), and International Society of Magnetic Resonance (2020). Britt has presented distinguished lectures including the Watt Lecture in Bioinorganic Chemistry (2019), Gorter Lecture (2016), and Humphrey Lecture (2017).