R. David Britt

Britt began his independent career at the University of California, Davis in 1989 as an assistant professor.^[8] He was promoted to associate professor in 1994, and to full professor in 1997.^[8] Since 2005, he has served as chair of the Department of Chemistry at Davis, and 2018 he was named the Winston Ko Professorship in Science Leadership.^[3][8]

Electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) spectroscopy is a technique that measures the relaxation of unpaired electron spins in an applied magnetic field. This technique is particularly useful for studying the mechanism of catalysis of metalloenzymes and enzymes containing organic radicals, as these mechanistic intermediates often contain unpaired electrons and thus give a distinct EPR signal. Enzymatic systems that the Britt group studies include the oxygen-evolving complex of photosystem II,^[9][10] the H₂-producing [FeFe] hydrogenases,^[11] nitrogenases, and radical SAM enzymes.^[12]

With then-postdoctoral scholar Stefan Stoll, Britt developed EasySpin, an open-source MATLAB software toolbox for simulating and fitting a wide range of EPR spectra.^[13]

Britt has collaborated with many synthetic chemists and biologists, including Daniel G. Nocera,^[14] Philip P. Power,^[15] Michael A. Marletta,^[16] Elizabeth M. Nolan,^[17] William H. Casey,^[18] and Judith P. Klinman.^[19]