Professional summary
Dan is the Associate Science Director for the Environmental Pressures & Responses science area. He provides scientific and people leadership to the five constituent research groups within the science area, contributing to scientific discovery and generating data, insights, and solutions that other researchers, businesses and governments need to solve environmental challenges and respond to the environmental challenges we face. Dan is a member of the UKCEH Executive Committee (ExCo) and the Science Leadership Committee (SLC), contributing to the strategic direction and impact of UKCEH.
Dan's background is in Molecular Ecology, for which he has >17 years of post-Phd research experience as a researcher and a Group Leader at UKCEH. His research interests involve applying molecular methods to understand the structure, function and dynamics of biological communities, environmental DNA (eDNA), freshwater microbiology, focusing on those in rivers and streams, and wastewater management and its role in antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in the environment.
He leads and manages a diverse portfolio of research, including Pathways of chemicals into freshwaters and their ecological impacts (PACIFIC) (£2M) under the NERC Freshwater Quality Programme, the NERC MICRO-CYCLE project (£1.6M), and the UKWIR Chemical Investigations Programme (CIP) phase 4 project on AMR (£2M).
Dan obtained a B.Sc. in Biology from Cardiff University in 2002. Following this, he stayed at Cardiff University to pursue doctoral studies, where he developed molecular approaches to investigate food webs in soil ecosystems. For this work, he obtained his PhD in Molecular Ecology from Cardiff University in 2007.