Faculty Profile for Dr. David Schilter

Biography Section

Biography and Education

I was born in Stans, Switzerland (1983) and grew up in Sydney, Australia, where I completed school and attended The University of Sydney. I pursued a Bachelor of Science (Advanced) degree and specialized in chemistry, a subject that aroused my curiosity for why matter is the way it is. It was also a subject that resonated with my creative side, which saw me gravitate towards Professor Len Lindoy and undertake metallo-supramolecular chemistry research. This work culminated in a thesis titled ‘Building Blocks for Supramolecular Architecture: Bis(β-diketonato)copper(ii) Metallocycles’, for which I was awarded First Class Honours and the University Medal (2004). I stayed at the same institution to study for my Doctor of Philosophy under the tutelage of Professor Louis Rendina, with whom I continued my theme of metallo-supramolecular chemistry, this time with a bio-inorganic and analytical flavor. Indeed, my thesis ‘Synthesis and DNA-binding of metallocyclic architectures’ (2009) described synthetic platinum and palladium complexes and their interactions with nucleic acids.
Eager to study catalysis, I joined Professor Thomas Rauchfuss at The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to study synthetic mimics of hydrogenases and laccases — enzymes that split H₂ and O₂, respectively (2009–2014). Alongside this organometallic research, I developed a passion for teaching while Lecturer for advanced analytical and inorganic courses. To gain more leadership experience, I served as a Research Scientist in the Center for Multidimensional Carbon Materials (CMCM) at UNIST in South Korea, where I studied carbenes and graphenes alongside Professors Rodney Ruoff and Christopher Bielawski, with whom I won nationally-competitive funds (2014–2016). After helping launch this Center, I joined Springer Nature (2016–2021) and helped launch Nature Reviews Chemistry. Rising from Associate to Senior Editor, I commissioned and edited articles, wrote news stories, prepared artwork, organized conferences, gave writing workshops and provided technical expertise for Nature Catalysis and Nature Communications. With this breadth of chemistry and publishing knowledge, I returned to research by joining Texas State University (2021–), where I am presently Assistant Professor.

Teaching Interests

Analytical chemistry
Inorganic chemistry

Research Interests

Commensurate with my diverse background, my teaching and research interests span supramolecular and organometallic chemistry, catalysis, mass spectrometry, vibrational spectroscopy and carbon materials. I am particularly enamored and experienced with synthetic transition metal complexes that mimic structural or functional aspects of enzymes that activate small molecules like carbon dioxide and methane. Such catalysis research will benefit from new strongly basic ligands, which motivated me to make C-donor systems based on N-heterocycles. Lastly, my passion for supramolecular chemistry and mass spectrometry has spurred me to develop methodologies to characterize reactive metal complexes in the gas phase.