Daniel came to cognitive science by way of mathematics and economics, training in Accra and then at the London School of Economics before completing his doctorate at Princeton. His research asks what it means to think well under genuine resource constraints — not idealized rationality, but the kind of selective, cost-conscious attention that real minds must exercise. His rational inattention models have been applied to everything from working memory to financial decision-making, and he leads the Institute's Open Cognitive Models initiative.