Daniel Tan was recruited and appointed by Technion - Israel Institute of Technology as the professor of Guangdong Technion - Israel Institute of Technology in August 2018. Dr. Tan received a Ph. D. in Materials Science and Engineering from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) in 1998, and a Ph.D in Solid State Physics from Chinese Academy of Science in 1989 following Academician T.S.Ke. He used to teach at the University of Science and Technology of China. In 1994-1995, he moved to the United States as a visiting scientist (Argonne National Laboratory and UIUC). He joined Honeywell Corp. in 1998 as a Sr. Scientist to develop high-K ferroelectric materials for semiconductor industry. During 2000-2004, he was recruited to CTS Corp. as a Sr. Staff Engineer to develop high performance piezoelectric transducers and cell phone antenna materials. In the following 12 years, he dedicated his passion, innovation and pioneering efforts in Nanodielectrics and Energy Storage to General Electric. In 2016, he joined W.L.Gore as a Sr. Polymer Dielectric Scientist to further the high performance polymer investigations for capacitor and membrane technology. 

Dr. Tan has authored/co-authored over 90 journal papers, 2 college teaching textbooks, 3 book chapters, and 50 corporate internal reports. As an innovator, he holds 55 patents and trade secrets in the field of ceramics, polymers, energy storage and electronic components. He has pioneered development in nanodielectric composites, high temperature and high energy density capacitors as a principal scientist for industry and US government. He is the recipient of various awards including the First Place Prize of Natural Science Award of Chinese Academy of Science (1993), GE Global Research Innovation Award (2008), 2022 Best Teaching Award of Guangdong Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, and The Most Worthy Technology Investment Award from the China Innovation and Entrepreneurship Fair 2023. He is a member of MRS, ACERS, SPIE, iMAPS and IEEE and reviewers of several journals.

The Tan group focuses on future generation functional materials for energy needs, in particular on the synthesis of nanocomposites with carefully crafted nano to mesoscale structures which lead to emergence of super-dielectric property (capacitive and resistive), advanced electromechanical property (piezoelectric) and thermoelectric properties. The group combines thin film coating and analytical techniques with advanced spectroscopic methods to probe physics of interfaces and dielectric phenomena in materials with non-ideal structures under extreme conditions. The group also has considerable research interests in high temperature capacitor and electrochemical capacitor technologies that rely on high energy-density dielectric films and nano-enabled electrode materials for electronic devices.