Dr. David Beck appointed Wilder Family Term Professor

Dr. David Beck has been appointed as the Wilder Family Term Professor. The award, founded by Warren and Liz Wilder, is broadly designated to support research, scholarship and educational endeavors of Chemical Engineering faculty. 

Beck is the director of research for the eScience Institute, the director of the Scientific Software Engineering Center, and a research associate professor in Chemical Engineering. He is also the faculty lead for the department’s Industry Capstone program, which provides experiential learning opportunities by pairing student teams with companies to develop solutions to issues across health and biotechnology, data science, clean energy and more. 

“I believe deeply that applied, experiential learning is the highest value educational experience,” Beck says. “Moreover, when the experiences are grounded in the genuine needs of our communities and ecosystems, learners can produce novel, important work that moves the state of science, engineering and scholarship forward.” 

The Wilder Family Professorship will provide Beck resources to expand access to experiential and applied learning programs for undergraduate students. “Not only can more learners participate in and learn from these types of engagements,” Beck says, “but we can offer unique resources like access to advanced AI computing hardware, robotics, and bleeding edge technologies at the intersection of chemical engineering, energy, environment and health.” 

Warren Wilder founded the Wilder Family Professorship with his wife, Liz, to support chemical engineering education at the University of Washington. 

Wilder paid his own way through college working in food service. “My first professional work was a research co-op, thanks to the University of Washington. It was transformative. I saw how chemistry created products that improved everyday life for millions of people. This launched my career.” 

Now, he wants to pay it forward by supporting the institution that helped him grow. He hopes the Wilder Family Professorship will expand opportunities in the department to more students so they can “use the education they receive to help build prosperity for themselves, for Washington state and for our country,” he says. 

The Wilders’ support for chemical engineering education and “their investment in our students, faculty and department has been incredibly important for us in carrying out our educational mission,” Elizabeth Nance, department chair, says. “The synergy between Liz and Warren’s commitment to supporting our students and Dave’s investment in enabling every ChemE student to have a meaningful experience that builds real-world skills is really exciting to witness.” 

Beck was selected for the Wilder Family Professorship for his innovative approaches to chemical engineering education. A national leader in this space, Beck has “transformed how students learn data science, machine learning, and scientific software development,” Nance, says. As the faculty lead for the Industry Capstone projects, Beck also shows deep investment in his students, working to ensure each one had meaningful, hands-on educational experience. 

For Beck, the Wilder Family Professorship will give him back one of his most valuable resources: time. “In a world where money is time and time is access to transformative research and engineering experiences, this funding is giving me more time to do what I love: drive research, engineering and scholarship forward in collaboration with our talented students of UW Chemical Engineering,” he says.