ChemE data science courses open doors

University of Washington alumnus Gregory Moore gives credit to ChemE’s data science courses for landing his early career dream job.

Gregory Moore (left) presents his master's thesis project in class at the University of Washington.

Moore graduated from the University of Washington in 2024 and earned both his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in bioresource science and engineering, housed in the UW College of the Environment. His academic path was driven by an interest in sustainability, chemical engineering, and developing novel materials in clean energy and energy storage.

For his master's degree thesis, Moore’s project aimed to develop a multifunctional liquid sensor that could detect water in organic solvents, and detect changes in moisture levels of a given environment. This thesis project required using data science and machine learning techniques to train the sensor model, and Moore knew he needed to deepen his understanding of these tools in order to be successful.

Moore enrolled in the data science courses offered by ChemE’s graduate program as electives to support his thesis work. The courses, Data Science Methods and Software Engineering for Molecular Data Scientists, taught data science concepts using chemical engineering-specific data sets and class examples like reactor flow rates or tissue sampling.

“At first it was personal interest that drew me to the courses, and learning something that could help support advancing research,” Moore said, “but it was also cool to see the multidisciplinary element emerge, and to be surrounded by people who were applying these skills to so many different fields and research areas.”

This proved to be beneficial in allowing Moore to complete his master’s degree thesis, but was also a major factor in his subsequent job search. Shortly after graduating in 2024, Moore was hired as a spectroscopy data scientist at Quantum Scape, a company that works to develop safer, more efficient electric vehicle batteries. As a spectroscopy data scientist, he works with chemical and materials engineers to examine and process their data efficiently.

“It was a really unique opportunity to find right after I had just taken these courses, and my thesis project exactly matched the demands of this job. I had included the ChemE data science course names on my application, and my employer really liked seeing that I had that specific knowledge and experience,” Moore said.

In addition to commending the skills and expertise he developed in data science through this coursework, Moore also credits the leading chemical engineering faculty members. David Beck and Shachi Mittal both instilled confidence and motivation in Moore and his academic and professional pursuits of becoming a data scientist in the field of materials engineering.