Serena DeBeer (born 1973) is an American chemist. She is currently a W3-Professor and the director at the
Max Planck Institute for Chemical Energy Conversion
The Max Planck Institute for Chemical Energy Conversion (MPI CEC) is a research institute of the Max Planck Society. It is located in the German town of Mülheim.
Research
The MPI CEC investigates fundamental chemical processes in energy transfo ...
in
Muelheim an der Ruhr,
Germany
Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG),, is a country in Central Europe. It is the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany lies between the Baltic and North Sea to the north and the Alps to the sou ...
, where she heads the Department of Inorganic Spectroscopy. Her expertise lies in the application and development of
X-ray based spectroscopic methods as probes of
electronic structure
In quantum chemistry, electronic structure is the state of motion of electrons in an electrostatic field created by stationary nuclei. The term encompasses both the wave functions of the electrons and the energies associated with them. Elec ...
in biological and chemical
catalysis
Catalysis () is the process of increasing the rate of a chemical reaction by adding a substance known as a catalyst (). Catalysts are not consumed in the reaction and remain unchanged after it. If the reaction is rapid and the catalyst recycl ...
.
Education and career
Serena DeBeer studied at
Southwestern University
Southwestern University (Southwestern or SU) is a private liberal arts college in Georgetown, Texas. Formed in 1873 from a revival of collegiate charters granted in 1840, Southwestern is the oldest college or university in Texas. Southwester ...
,
Georgetown, TX (USA) where she completed her
bachelor
A bachelor is a man who is not and has never been married.Bachelors are, in Pitt & al.'s phrasing, "men who live independently, outside of their parents' home and other institutional settings, who are neither married nor cohabitating". ().
Etymol ...
program in
Chemistry, with minor in
Mathematics in 1995 (with honors). She received her doctorate from
Stanford University in 2002, working under the guidance of
Edward I. Solomon
Edward I. Solomon (born 1946) is the Monroe E. Spaght Professor of Chemistry at Stanford University. He is an elected member of the United States National Academy of Sciences, a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Scienc ...
and
Keith O. Hodgson. She then moved to
SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory
SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, originally named the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center,
is a United States Department of Energy National Laboratory operated by Stanford University under the programmatic direction of the U.S. Departme ...
, where she worked first as a beamline scientist (2001–2003) at the
Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory, and later as staff scientist (2003–2009). In the Fall of 2009, she relocated to
Cornell University
Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to ...
in
Ithaca, NY
Ithaca is a city in the Finger Lakes region of New York, United States. Situated on the southern shore of Cayuga Lake, Ithaca is the seat of Tompkins County and the largest community in the Ithaca metropolitan statistical area. It is named af ...
(USA), where she accepted a faculty position as
Assistant Professor
Assistant Professor is an academic rank just below the rank of an associate professor used in universities or colleges, mainly in the United States and Canada.
Overview
This position is generally taken after earning a doctoral degree and gene ...
at the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology. In the Summer of 2011, she moved to Germany and started to work as a W2-Professor and research group leader at the Max Planck Institute for Bioinorganic Chemistry (since 2012
Max Planck Institute for Chemical Energy Conversion, MPI CEC) in
Mülheim an der Ruhr
Mülheim, officially Mülheim an der Ruhr () and also described as ''"City on the River"'', is a city in North Rhine-Westphalia in Germany. It is located in the Ruhr Area between Duisburg, Essen, Oberhausen and Ratingen. It is home to many comp ...
, Germany. Since 2012 she has held the position of an adjunct professor at
Cornell University
Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to ...
as well as an Honorary Faculty position at
Ruhr University Bochum
The Ruhr University Bochum (, ) is a public research university located in the southern hills of the central Ruhr area, Bochum, Germany. It was founded in 1962 as the first new public university in Germany after World War II. Instruction began in ...
since 2014.
DeBeer headed the research group "X-ray Spectroscopy" at MPI CEC until 2017 when she was appointed director at this institute and promoted to a W3-Professor. Currently she leads the department of "Inorganic Spectroscopy" at MPI CEC. Additionally, she is the group leader of the PINK beamline
project at the Energy and Materials In-Situ Laboratory
at the
Helmholtz Zentrum Berlin, Germany.
Research
Research in the DeBeer group focuses on answering fundamental questions in energy research. Namely, how does one reversibly store and release energy from chemical bonds using earth abundant transition metals? And how is this done most efficiently? Her research group studies homogeneous, heterogeneous and biological catalysts in order to answer these questions, with a primary focus on enzymatic catalysis. She is an expert in the application of advanced X-ray spectroscopy to understand catalytic transformations.
Nitrogenase
A strong focus of her research is to study the enzyme that is responsible for the conversion of
dinitrogen (N
2) to
ammonia
Ammonia is an inorganic compound of nitrogen and hydrogen with the formula . A stable binary hydride, and the simplest pnictogen hydride, ammonia is a colourless gas with a distinct pungent smell. Biologically, it is a common nitrogeno ...
(NH
3)—
Nitrogenase
Nitrogenases are enzymes () that are produced by certain bacteria, such as cyanobacteria (blue-green bacteria) and rhizobacteria. These enzymes are responsible for the reduction of nitrogen (N2) to ammonia (NH3). Nitrogenases are the only fam ...
. Serena DeBeer and her group study this remarkable system comprising a
FeMo cofactor
FeMoco ( cofactor) is the primary cofactor of nitrogenase. Nitrogenase is the enzyme that catalyzes the conversion of atmospheric nitrogen molecules N2 into ammonia (NH3) through the process known as nitrogen fixation. Containing iron and molybd ...
(FeMoco) as its active site, and structural model complexes utilizing high-resolution
X-ray absorption (XAS) and
X-ray emission spectroscopy X-ray emission spectroscopy (XES) is a form of X-ray spectroscopy in which the X-ray line spectra are measured with a spectral resolution sufficient to analyze the impact of the chemical environment on the X-ray line energy and on branching ratios.
...
(XES). Through this work, great progress has been made in understanding the structure of this active site. A key contribution was a spectroscopic identification of the central atom in the active site as a carbide.
Moreover, the application of high-resolution XAS spectroscopy supported with theoretical calculations, allowed her group to succeed in the assignment of the oxidation state of the Mo atom in the FeMoco as Mo(III). This study was followed up later with the experimental evidence of a non-Hund spin configuration at the Mo atom by means of
X-ray Magnetic Circular Dichroism
X-ray magnetic circular dichroism (XMCD) is a difference spectrum of two X-ray absorption spectra (XAS) taken in a magnetic field, one taken with left circularly polarized light, and one with right circularly polarized light. By closely analyzi ...
(XMCD) spectroscopy.
Another approach in this field concerns comparative studies of different forms of nitrogenase enzymes with FeMoco and FeVco active sites,
Selenium
Selenium is a chemical element with the symbol Se and atomic number 34. It is a nonmetal (more rarely considered a metalloid) with properties that are intermediate between the elements above and below in the periodic table, sulfur and telluriu ...
-incorporated FeMoco, as well as spectroscopic characterization of the first intermediate state of the nitrogenase catalytic cycle (E
1).
Methane monooxygenase
Another important chemical conversion studied by her group is the catalytic oxidation of
methane
Methane ( , ) is a chemical compound with the chemical formula (one carbon atom bonded to four hydrogen atoms). It is a group-14 hydride, the simplest alkane, and the main constituent of natural gas. The relative abundance of methane on Ear ...
to
methanol. Nature utilizes a group of enzymes called
methane monooxygenase
Methane monooxygenase (MMO) is an enzyme capable of oxidizing the C-H bond in methane as well as other alkanes. Methane monooxygenase belongs to the class of oxidoreductase enzymes ().
There are two forms of MMO: the well-studied soluble form (s ...
(MMOs). The active site of this enzyme that enables the cleavage of the C-H of
methane
Methane ( , ) is a chemical compound with the chemical formula (one carbon atom bonded to four hydrogen atoms). It is a group-14 hydride, the simplest alkane, and the main constituent of natural gas. The relative abundance of methane on Ear ...
is a dinuclear Fe(IV) intermediate Q found in the hydroxylase protein (MMOH) of MMO. Spectroscopic studies in the DeBeer group have provided new insights into the structure of this diiron complex. Through applications of advanced X-ray spectroscopic studies like high-resolution
XAS they characterized the key intermediate in biological methane oxidation as an open-core diiron structure (with Fe
IV=O motif). Additional
EXAFS
Extended X-ray absorption fine structure (EXAFS), along with X-ray absorption near edge structure ( XANES), is a subset of X-ray absorption spectroscopy ( XAS). Like other absorption spectroscopies, XAS techniques follow Beer's law. The X-ray ...
studies confirmed this finding by showing no evidence for a short Fe-Fe distance but rather a long diiron distance consistent with an open-core structure.
Spectroscopy Development
Recent work of DeBeer's group has focused on developing the full information content of various X-ray spectroscopic methods and their application to biological catalysts.
Among these methods are:
Valence X-ray Emission Spectroscopy
In this method (also known as VtC XES = Valence-to-Core X-ray Emission Spectroscopy), one monitors the resultant fluorescence after a valence electron refills the ionized metal 1s core hole. As such, valence XES spectra provide a map of ligand ionization energies, and provides information on both ligand identity and protonation state. A prominent application of this method its use to identify the central carbon atom in FeMo cofactor of Nitrogenase (see section
Nitrogenase
Nitrogenases are enzymes () that are produced by certain bacteria, such as cyanobacteria (blue-green bacteria) and rhizobacteria. These enzymes are responsible for the reduction of nitrogen (N2) to ammonia (NH3). Nitrogenases are the only fam ...
).
Resonant valence XES (RXES) or Resonant Inelastic X-ray Scattering (RIXS)
The DeBeer group is actively involved in the development and application of RXES/
RIXS
Resonant inelastic X-ray scattering (RIXS) is an X-ray spectroscopy technique used to investigate the electronic structure of molecules and materials.
Inelastic X-ray scattering is a fast developing experimental technique in which one scatters hi ...
based methods in both the hard and soft
X-ray
X-rays (or rarely, ''X-radiation'') are a form of high-energy electromagnetic radiation. In many languages, it is referred to as Röntgen radiation, after the German scientist Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen, who discovered it in 1895 and named it ' ...
regime. These include 1s-Valence
RIXS
Resonant inelastic X-ray scattering (RIXS) is an X-ray spectroscopy technique used to investigate the electronic structure of molecules and materials.
Inelastic X-ray scattering is a fast developing experimental technique in which one scatters hi ...
as a means to obtain ligand-selective
XAS and 2p3d
RIXS
Resonant inelastic X-ray scattering (RIXS) is an X-ray spectroscopy technique used to investigate the electronic structure of molecules and materials.
Inelastic X-ray scattering is a fast developing experimental technique in which one scatters hi ...
as a means to map out the d-d excitations.
X-ray Magnetic Circular Dichroism (XMCD)
This method has been extensively used in solid-state materials, to determine the magnetic properties. Past applications to (bio-)inorganic or protein systems were lacking proper qualitative and quantitative interpretations. DeBeer's group expanded the information that can be obtained from XMCD of covalent systems. To date, this been the only one method able to provide evidence for the proposed non-Hund configuration at the Mo atom in Nitrogenase
(see section
Nitrogeanse).
Instrumentation
A laboratory based dispersive X-ray Emission Spectrometer
The group of Serena DeBeer in collaboration with the group of Prof.
Birgit Kangießer at
TU Berlin
The Technical University of Berlin (official name both in English and german: link=no, Technische Universität Berlin, also known as TU Berlin and Berlin Institute of Technology) is a public research university located in Berlin, Germany. It was ...
, developed an in-house dispersive X-ray Emission Spectroscopy (XES) setup. The setup that utilizes a laboratory X‑ray source (Metal Jet) in combination with a von Hamos full cylinder optic with Highly Annealed Pyrolytic Graphite (HAPG) crystal and a CCD detector. This allows obtaining spectra in the 2.4-9 keV range. Moreover, this spectrometer is an alternative to synchrotron-based beamlines for concentrated samples.
PINK Beamline
The DeBeer group is also leading the development of the PINK beamline
at the Energy Materials In-situ Laboratory
at the
Helmholtz Zentrum Berlin. Dr. Sergey Peredkov is the lead designer and instrument scientist for this project. This beamline operates in 2-10 keV energy regime, either in a “pink” beam mode with multilayer mirror or with monochromatic beam (by addition of a double crystal
monochromator
A monochromator is an optical device that transmits a mechanically selectable narrow band of wavelengths of light or other radiation chosen from a wider range of wavelengths available at the input. The name is from the Greek roots ''mono-'', "si ...
). The beamline is presently in a commissioning phase.
Awards and recognition
*
European Research Council
The European Research Council (ERC) is a public body for funding of scientific and technological research conducted within the European Union (EU). Established by the European Commission in 2007, the ERC is composed of an independent Scientif ...
(ERC) Synergy Grant for the project: Unravelling the secrets of Cu-based catalysts for C-H activation (CUBE). Collaborative project with researchers from
University of Oslo
The University of Oslo ( no, Universitetet i Oslo; la, Universitas Osloensis) is a public research university located in Oslo, Norway. It is the highest ranked and oldest university in Norway. It is consistently ranked among the top univers ...
(Norway),
Norwegian University of Life Sciences
The Norwegian University of Life Sciences ( no, Norges miljø- og biovitenskapelige universitet, NMBU) is a public university located in Ås, Norway. It is located at Ås in Viken, near Oslo, and at Adamstuen in Oslo and has around 5,200 stud ...
(Norway) and
University of Turin
The University of Turin ( Italian: ''Università degli Studi di Torino'', UNITO) is a public research university in the city of Turin, in the Piedmont region of Italy. It is one of the oldest universities in Europe and continues to play an imp ...
(Italy) (2019)
* Associate Editor for
Chemical Science
Chemistry is the scientific study of the properties and behavior of matter. It is a natural science that covers the elements that make up matter to the compounds made of atoms, molecules and ions: their composition, structure, properties, ...
(2018–present)
* Inorganic Chemistry Lectureship Award (2016)
*
Society of Biological Inorganic Chemistry The Society of Biological Inorganic Chemistry is a learned society established to advance research and education in the field of biological inorganic chemistry. It holds training courses, workshops and conferences to facilitate exchange of informat ...
(SBIC), Early Career Award (2015)
*
European Research Council
The European Research Council (ERC) is a public body for funding of scientific and technological research conducted within the European Union (EU). Established by the European Commission in 2007, the ERC is composed of an independent Scientif ...
(ERC) Consolidator grant for the project: Spectroscopic Studies of N
2 Reduction: From Biological to Heterogeneous Catalysis (N2ase) (2013)
* Kavli Fellow,
U.S. National Academy of Sciences
The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Natio ...
(2012)
*
Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow (2011–2013)
References
External links
Prof. Dr. Serena DeBeeron cec.mpg.de
{{DEFAULTSORT:DeBeer, Serena
Living people
American women chemists
Stanford University alumni
21st-century American women scientists
Cornell University faculty
1973 births
American women academics
Max Planck Institute directors
Southwestern University alumni