Dan Sweeney, Ph.D., is the lead researcher in the Massachusett Institute of Technology D-Lab Biomass Fuel & Cookstoves Group. Dan provides technical assistance to field partners and performs lab- and field-based research and development on biomass and waste conversion processes.

After finishing a PhD at the University of Utah, he moved to Sweden for a Fulbright Fellowship focused on the development of advanced processes for converting biomass residues to energy and fuels (and, while there, sometimes got to cross-country ski over the frozen Baltic Sea to work when the road was impassable by bicycle).

Dan is active in the International Standards Organization (ISO) Technical Committee on Clean Cooking Solutions and was the lead instructor for the 2016 International Development Design Summit on Cookstoves, held in Kampala, Uganda and lead organizer for the Advancing Sustainable Charcoal Enterprises at Scale Convening in October 2018 in Kenya. Dan hails from Northern Colorado where his family operates a small farm. He enjoys foraging, folk music, and finding adventures in the outdoors wherever life takes him.