Dan earned a BS in Cell Biology and Genetics at the University of Maryland, College Park. He began his research career as a National Institutes of Health predoctoral fellow in Paul Roche's laboratory at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland. As a graduate student, Dan studied cancer chemotherapy and cell death in Jenny Ting's laboratory at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Dan then earned a Lineberger postdoctoral fellowship at UNC and spent a year investigating DNA repair in Jeff Sekelsky's lab. As a Marshall Sherfield Fellow, Dan will be working on cell polarity in Daniel St Johnston's laboratory in the Gurdon Institute at the University of Cambridge. His interests outside the lab include his wife and his Gretsch.