Ari Daniel

Ari Daniel is a freelance contributor to NPR's Science desk.

He has always been drawn to science and the natural world. As a graduate student, he trained gray seal pups (Halichoerus grypus) for his Master's degree in animal behavior at the University of St. Andrews, and helped tag wild Norwegian killer whales (Orcinus orca) for his Ph.D. in biological oceanography at MIT and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. For more than a decade, as a science reporter and multimedia producer, he has interviewed a species he's better equipped to understand — Homo sapiens.

He has reported across six continents on science topics ranging from astronomy to zooxanthellae. His radio pieces have aired on NPR, The World, Radiolab and Here & Now, and he contributes stories to the New York Times. He formerly worked as a reporter for NPR's Science desk where he covered global health and development. Before that, he was the Senior Digital Producer at NOVA where he helped oversee the production of the show's digital video content. He is a co-recipient of the AAAS Kavli Science Journalism Gold Award for his radio stories on glaciers and climate change in Greenland and Iceland.

In the fifth grade, he won the "Most Contagious Smile" award.