Dan is a Royal Society University Research Fellow (URF) at the Department of Chemistry. He grew up on Anglesey, North Wales, and obtained his MChem degree nearby from Bangor University (2010–2014), winning the Dr John Roberts Jones cross-subject prize as a top-ranking student across all disciplines. He obtained his PhD from Durham University supervised by Prof. Martin Bryce (2014–2018), followed by a postdoc with Prof. Hugo Bronstein at the University of Cambridge (2018–2020), before he was appointed as a Herchel Smith Postdoctoral Fellow in Organic Chemistry (2020–2024).

In 2024 Dan was awarded a Royal Society University Research Fellowship to start a research group at Oxford. In 2025 he was appointed as a Research Fellow in Chemistry at St. John’s College and won an ERC Starting Grant.