Swearer Center for Public Service

• Ph.D. Entomology and Ecology, Evolutionary Biology, and Behavior, 2023, Michigan State University
• B.S. Environmental Science and Spanish Language, Literature, and Linguistics, 2018, Temple University

Dan leads the Community-Engaged Data and Evaluation Collaborative (CEDEC), building and supporting collaborations between the Swearer Center, Rhode Island community partners, and Brown University campus partners. In this role, Dan connects these groups to sustain mutually beneficial partnerships around data collection and analysis, reporting, evaluation and research. While forever a useR (someone who uses/loves the R programming language), he has grown an affinity for Python and building data tools that ultimately work for the people most impacted. He teaches an undergraduate course in the fall with the Data Science Institute, DATA 0080: Data, Ethics and Society.

Dan received his undergraduate degree from Temple University in the heart of Philadelphia, where his data journey began studying biodiversity and urban ecology. He went on to earn a dual Ph.D. in Entomology and Ecology, Evolutionary Biology, and Behavior from Michigan State University, where he led a collaboration to engineer and analyze a large database of plant chemicals. Though he spent many years with plants and bugs, people and the decisions they made to steward land and data were at the core of his work, thus making his work with CEDEC a great match. Dan has also spent years consulting in the philanthropic sector, building data systems and supporting data-informed decision-making with grantmakers.