He received a Ph.D. in Crop Science from Oklahoma State University and joined the staff of the Louisiana Agricultural Experiment Station at the Northeast Research Station in 1986. Dan conducted weed control research in soybean, corn, cotton, and cereal grains in northeast Louisiana. In 1996, he joined the Department of Plant & Soil Sciences with Mississippi State University. Currently his responsibilities include teaching, weed control research in corn, cotton, and soybean along with conservation tillage systems. His research program is now focusing on the use of spatial technologies to assess the needs and application of herbicides, plant growth regulators, and harvest-aids site-specifically. The introduction of transgenic crops has led to increased incidents of off-target deposition of herbicides such as glyphosate. Dan has worked with computer and electrical engineers to develop methods for detection and assessment of these events by utilizing multispectral and hyper-spectral data. He has served as the President of the Southern Weed Science Society (SWSS) as well as on various committees of the Weed Science Society of America. In 1999 he received the SWSS Outstanding Young Weed Scientist Award, in 2003 he was the recipient of the SWSS Outstanding Educator Award, and in 2012, he was selected as the SWSS Weed Scientist of the Year. Additionally, Dan was selected by the Mississippi Agricultural Forestry Experiment Station as their 2012 Researcher of the Year.