Dan Pryor enlisted in the Marine Corp following graduation in 1969. After basic training and infantry training, he was assigned as an MP at Alameda Naval Air Station.

In September of 1972 he enrolled as a freshman at CSU - Ft. Collins and graduated with BS and MS degrees in Mathematics in 1975 and 1997 respectively. At that time he took a position at the Cabot Corporation Research Center in the Boston area, working in the area of applied mathematics and computer simulation of chemical production processes. He returned to CSU - Ft. Collins in September of 1978 and received MS and PhD degrees in Mechanical Engineering in 1981 and 1983. While still a student he joined the research staff of CSU's Institute for Computational Studies where he remained until 1987.

Since June of 1987, he has worked as a mathematician and computer scientist for the non-profit Institute for Defense Analysis in the Washington, D.C. area. His particular area of expertise has been high performance computers and their applications. He is part of a group that advises the government on the strengths and weaknesses of current and proposed supercomputer designs and assists in the development of mathematical algorithms and software.