Daniel obtained a joint "Magister" (Mag.phil) degree from the University of Vienna (Austria) in English, Communication Science and History (2000), writing his thesis about the global spread of English. He also obtained a Master of Arts in Contemporary European Studies from the University of Bath (UK, 2002), where he first encountered European research policy and tackled the issue of involving civil society in FP6.
After several internships in European umbrella NGOs and a stint as online editor for two Austrian newspapers he has been working on EU funded projects since 2005, in the areas of eHealth, ICT, SME support and the knowledge based bio-economy, in particular the MoniQA Network of Excellence (FP6).
Within these projects he has developed policy related actions and communication activities with the aim of ensuring the concrete applicability of scientific results in the policy sphere and enabling the interaction with all stakeholders, including the citizens. He has also been involved in the preparation of a significant number of EU grant proposals, where he has contributed his expertise of clear and concise writing and in developing the potential impact of projects beyond their scientific results.
From January 2012 to January 2018 Daniel was employed by the European Commission as a senior policy officer for open access to scientific peer-reviewed publications and research data. In this capacity he contributed to the development of open access and open research data policies in Horizon 2020 and the EU as part of the team developing open science policy. In this context he interacted with the Member States and relevant external stakeholders, providing presentations and trainings as well as managing projects in this area.
As of September 2018 Daniel is registered as an advocacy expert in the field of EU research policy & Open Science. In this capacity he has monitored the development of Horizon Europe as well as being appointed rapporteur of the PSF expert group on developing recommendations for open access in Malta . He was a senior non-key expert on how to integrate open access in the reform of the Azerbaijani higher education system. In 2021 Daniel untertook an analysis of Data Management Plans in Horizon 2020, the results of which were published in Open Research Europe. In a follow up study he investigated the use of creative commons licences in DMPs. He also provided an assessment of the EOSC readiness of three European Countries for RFII (in German).
He is also a lecturer at two Austrian universities and provides training for non-University clients. He regularily contributes to the Research Europe Magazine on issues such as Open Strategic Autonomy, science diplomacy and research budget negotiations.
He is also employed part time at the Ludwig Boltzman Gesellschaft where he was PI for a data re-use project for the Open Innovation in Science Center in Vienna, Since January 2020 he is working in the LBG grants and policy office, supporting their EU activities.
