Danny earned his Ph.D. in Materials Science & Engineering from Northwestern University under the advisorship of Prof. Lincoln Lauhon from 2004-2009. During this time he established the application of APT to map dopant impurities in low-dimensional semiconductor nanostructures. Using APT, Danny helped to establish key fundamental aspects of dopant incorporation during vapor-liquid-solid growth of semiconductor nanowires. Danny then moved from Chicago, Illinois to Los Alamos, New Mexico where he joined Dr. S. Tom Picraux’s research group at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) as a Director’s Postdoctoral Fellow appointee. There, Danny focused on demonstrating semiconductor nanowire heterointerface engineering through in situ catalyst alloying during VLS growth. After about 2 years at LANL, he then moved to Richland Washington to join the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory as a staff member in 2011 at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL). At PNNL, he continues to steward the APT capabilities to support the scientific mission of various sponsors and to work with users from around the world. Over the last 13 years, Danny and other core staff have helped grow APT at PNNL to over 20 expert staff and students with 3 APT systems dedicated to the analysis of biological and environmental materials, functional and structural materials, and nuclear materials.

Danny’s research interests have evolved over the years at PNNL from mapping composition, photodynamics and interfacial electric fields of nanowires, to structural and nuclear metal alloys systems, to biological and biogeochemical materials. Seeing opportunities to adapt APT analysis to hydrated biological materials (such as cellular components and proteins), he has spent much effort to design and modify FIB and APT systems with an environmental transfer hub system and developed unique cryogenic-based techniques and environmentally protected transfer protocols for the APT analysis of frozen hydrated materials. This work has pioneered APT analysis for materials and biological sciences. Inspired by the work of others, including professor Block, Danny has also incorporated high temperature gas phase reactors onto the LEAP platform and modified the FIM gas delivery system to provide insight into surface reaction dynamics in the presence of high electric fields. Most recently, Danny has helped to stand up a new laboratory space dedicated to the microstructural characterization and corrosion analysis of highly radioactive nuclear materials, including plutonium metal.