Dan Nicolae is Vice President of the Executive Board of Directors of the Romanian United Foundation (RUF) and a proud Founding Angel 😇 together with his wife, researcher Raluca Nicolae.

He is the Elaine M. and Samuel D. Kersten, Jr. Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago, where he serves as Faculty Co-Director of the Data Science Institute and of the Committee on Data Science. He holds appointments in Statistics, Human Genetics, and Medicine, and has been a professor at the University of Chicago since 1999. His leadership roles have included Section Chief of Genetic Medicine (2014–2016) and Chair of the Department of Statistics (2016–2022). The Data Science Institute was founded under his leadership to advance the university’s vision in data science and artificial intelligence.

Dan earned his Ph.D. in Statistics from the University of Chicago in 1999, after graduating from the University of Bucharest. He has held visiting positions at deCODE Genetics (Iceland), the University of Oxford, and UCLA, and has served on numerous scientific panels, advisory boards, and editorial boards across North America and Europe. His research focuses on developing statistical and computational methods to understand human genetic variation and its role in complex disease risk, drawing on high-dimensional statistical inference, machine learning, and data science.

Born in Craiova, Romania, Dan discovered his passion for mathematics early on, winning three national Olympiad prizes. Deeply committed to education and mentorship, in 2018 he co-founded—together with the Bucharest University of Economic Studies—the Data Science International Summer School in Predeal, Romania, an annual program introducing students to state-of-the-art topics in machine learning, data analytics, statistics, and data visualization. Together with his family, he actively supports educational initiatives, with a particular focus on empowering young women.