Daniel P. W. Ellis received the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, where he was a Research Assistant in the Machine Listening Group of the Media Lab. He spent several years as a Research Scientist at the International Computer Science Institute, Berkeley, CA. In 2000, he took a faculty position with the Electrical Engineering Department, Columbia University, New York. In 2015, he left for his current position as a Research Scientist with Google in New York. His research is concerned with all aspects of extracting high-level information from audio, including speech recognition, music description, and environmental sound processing. He also runs the AUDITORY email list of over 2000 worldwide researchers in perception and cognition of sound.

Ellis grew up in England, where he attended Bedales School, and received his undergraduate degree in engineering from Cambridge University. At Cambridge, he was a resident of Trinity Hall.