About

Daniel Dehaan is a sound designer, composer, and audio engineer with over fifteen years of experience creating meaningful audio experiences across interactive installations, games, film, and commercial media.

He holds a doctorate in music composition and technology from Northwestern University, where his research focused on spatial audio and emerging technologies. Daniel got his professional start crafting original concert experiences, spending years traveling internationally to design immersive performances that unfolded over hours in unconventional spaces.

That early work shaped a lasting interest in sound as something that holds people, guides attention, and moves through time in ways that feel organic rather than imposed. He has since designed audio for award-winning VR games, composed scores for film, and built the complete sonic identity for large-scale brand installations for Fortune 500 companies.

As an Assistant Professor at Columbia College Chicago, Daniel teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in sound design, composition, and interactive media. He secured funding to design and build three professional production studios and serves as program coordinator for the Sound Design program. His teaching is informed by an active professional practice — he believes the best way to prepare students is to keep making things alongside them.

Daniel is also the founder of Make Things Studio that has several active projects in the works. In addition to this he remains actively engaged with research into how emerging technologies can enhance and augment creative audio work, and maintains an ongoing interest in how these tools and formats can expand what's possible. When not in the studio or classroom, he loves spending time with his kids, noodling with his modular synthesizer, or wandering through natural spaces.