Marie-Christine Daniel earned a B.S. degree in Chemistry from the University of Rennes 1 and received her Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of Bordeaux 1 (France), under the supervision of Prof. Didier Astruc, where she compared the abilities of dendrimers and nanoparticles to specifically detect diverse environmentally and biologically relevant anions in solution. She then worked as a postdoctoral researcher at Indiana University-Bloomington, studying the nucleation of virus capsids using gold nanoparticles. In 2007, she joined the department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Maryland Baltimore County, where she is now Associate Professor. The Daniel lab's ongoing projects involve the preparation of multifunctional inorganic nanoparticles for medical, environmental and materials applications.