He is a climate scientist with diverse research interests including: climate impacts and extremes, detection and attribution of recent climatic, and deep-time paleoclimatology. Prior to Northwestern, Daniel spent four years as a postdoctoral scholar in the School of Earth Sciences at Stanford University, earned his PhD in geological sciences at the University of Michigan, and obtained bachelors degrees in atmospheric science and physics from Texas A&M and Tulane University, respectively. Between undergraduate and graduate stints he served five years in the U.S. Air Force as a weather officer and operational meteorologist.