David was born and raised in Slovenia, where he obtained his Bachelor’s Degree in Chemistry (University of Ljubljana). He carried out his undergraduate research with Prof. K. C. Nicolaou at Scripps and Prof. Samuel J. Danishefsky at Columbia. He obtained his Ph.D. in chemistry with Prof. K. C. Nicolaou involving the total synthesis of complex natural products. David then joined Prof. Erick M. Carreira's group at ETH as a postdoctoral fellow and explored the field of asymmetric catalysis. In the fall of 2014 David joined the faculty at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign and moved to Rice University in 2024. His research interests span from the synthesis of complex, biologically active natural products and the related chemical biology to methodology development.

David and his research group have been recognized for their accomplishments by a number of awards, including an NSF CAREER Award, a Fellowship from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Theme Chemistry Journals Award, the Grammaticakis-Neumann Prize (Swiss Chemical Society), a Research Scholar Award (American Cancer Society), a Kyoto Rising-Star Award Lectureship (Merck Sharp & Dohme), the Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award (American Chemical Society), the Elias J. Corey Award for Outstanding Original Contribution in Organic Synthesis by a Young Investigator; as well as several industrial Young Investigator Awards, including from BMS, Amgen, Eli Lilly, and FMC.