Education
/2011-2014/ Postdoctoral research, ETH Zürich
/2006-2011/ Ph.D. The Scripps Research Institute,CA
/2002-2006/ B.S. in Chemistry, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia
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.
Awards
2021 Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award
2020 Kyoto Rising-Star Award Lectureship (Merck Sharp & Dohme)
2020 American Cancer Society Scholar
2020 FMC New Investigator Award
2019 Eli Lilly Grantee Award
2019 Amgen Young Investigator Award
2019 BMS Unrestricted Grant Award in Synthetic Chemistry
2019 NOS Young Investigator
2019 Grammaticakis-Neumann Prize
2018 ACS Young Investigator
2018 Thieme Chemistry Journals Award
2018 UIUC Lincoln Excellence for Assistant Professors Scholars Award
2017 Alfred P. Sloan Fellow
2016 National Science Foundation CAREER Award
2011 Roche Excellence in Chemistry Award, Nutley, NJ
2010 Bristol-Myers Squibb Endowed Graduate Fellowship, Lawrenceville, NJ
Contact information
Rice University
Department of Chemistry
MS-60, 341 Dell Butcher Hall
Houston, TX 77005