Jonathan Daniels was born in Salem, IL but spent his formative years in Springfield, IL, at which point he discovered what would become a life-long passion for the sciences during his tenure at Springfield High School. He thoroughly enjoyed chemistry and physiology, and he was accepted into the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1995 with initial intent to pursue a degree in the teaching of chemistry at the high school level. Fate had other things in mind, however, when Dr. Daniels pursued a volunteer opportunity at the local hospital.

Dr. Daniels was torn between the two worlds of science education and medicine so he pursued a masters degree in Biochemistry while also being accepted at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign medical school where he spent all 4 years completing their MD program. Education was still at the fore-front of his professional life as he served as teaching assistant for the MS-1 physiology and biochemistry courses.

Upon graduation from UIUC in 2011, Dr. Daniels matched into the University of Chicago-Evanston internal medicine program. He discovered a love for cardiovascular and critical care medicine but enjoyed all fields of medicine enough that he decided not to pursue a fellowship but he would continue to contribute to medical education by serving as Chief Resident of the program during the 2014-2015 academic year.

Dr. Daniels pursued nocturnal hospital medicine positions both in Evanston, IL and Racine, WI from the years of 2015-late 2020. Nocturnal medicine allowed Dr. Daniels to manage complex patients, including ICU patients in the open ICU environment, while still being able to treat the more general medical patient population on the acute medicine wards (the best of best worlds in his opinion.) He was just as happy performing peak flows at bedside as placing central lines in the ICU. His passion for education was not being satisfied, however, and thus when a job became available at the Captain James A. Lovell Federal Health Care Center on their teaching hospitalist service, he jumped at the opportunity and has been serving the veterans and the IM residents/students of CMS/RFUMS since December 2020. He was appointed to Assistant Professor of Medicine in early 2021 and promoted to Associate Professor in 2024. In January of 2022, Dr. Daniels was appointed as Program Director of the Chicago Medical School Internal Medicine Residency Program at the Captain James A. Lovell Federal Health Care Center.