In 2008, Dan graduated from UC Berkeley with a bachelor's degree in mathematics, then went to Stanford to earn his PhD in economics, which he completed in 2014. Upon finishing his PhD, he worked as an assistant professor of economics, first at Texas A&M University, then at the Villanova School of Business. His teaching and research focused on game theory, market design, behavioral & experimental economics.
Dan published several papers, including some in top field journals such as Theoretical Economics and Games and Economic Behavior. In a recent paper, he devised algorithms for cities to match students to public schools according to families' preferences while maintaining diversity.
From 2021 to 2023, Dan worked at Upwork–a platform for clients to find freelancers to complete remote work. He worked on the ads and monetization team to build multiple products, one being an auction where freelancers can spend extra on their job applications to compete for sponsored slots that are pinned to the top of the client’s list of proposals.