David B. Berkowitz

David B. Berkowitz is Director of the Division of Chemistry at the National Science Foundation, where he oversees a staff of over 40 and an annual budget of approximately $260 M dedicated to funding fundamental science in chemistry that bears on many other disciplines and that is directed at training the next generation of scientists. 

Berkowitz also co-chairs the Sustainable Chemistry Strategy Team at OSTP (Office of Science and Technology Policy) @ The White House.  Berkowitz is also Willa Cather Professor of Chemistry at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL) where he leads an active research group engaged in science at the chemistry/biology interface.

His particular interests are in stereocontrolled synthesis, biocatalysis, the development and application of novel screening methodologies, and in the mechanistic study and inhibition of PLP-dependent enzymes.

Berkowitz is co-founder and co-lead of the Nebraska Drug Discovery and Development Pipeline (ND3P), a research superstructure designed to foster collaborative research between UNL in Lincoln and UNMC (University of Nebraska Medical Center) in Omaha.  

David Berkowitz studied at the University of Chicago (B.S.-Phi Beta Kappa), Harvard/ETH-Zürich (Ph.D.) and Yale (PD). His honoraria include Visiting Professorships at the the Université de Paris (2016), the Max Planck Institute (Dortmund, Germany, 2006) and the Université de Rouen (Normandy, France, 2005). Berkowitz is a AAAS Fellow (2015), a Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) Fellow (2008) and an Alfred P. Sloan Fellow (1997). In 2018, Berkowitz chaired the international Gordon Research Conference on Biocatalysis. Berkowitz currently serves on the Chemical Sciences Roundtable at the National Academy of Sciences.