Dan Sartoris, P.E.'s Linkedin Analytics

TS-SCI Cleared Data Scientist and Engineer! At nine years old, I discovered the wonders of combining just the right angle of the sun going through a magnifying glass to burn a design into a small piece of wood to create a unique gift. From an early age, I have always had an insatiable sense of curiosity about everything math and science. Naturally, when I learned about data science and the variety of industries this career flourishes in, it seemed like the natural progression for me from engineering. My math and programming background is already strongly aligned with data science. The primary area of focus for my engineering career has been thermal and fluid analyses for turbomachinery, and I want to leverage my modeling experience, engineering skills and domain knowledge with data science and analytics to drive growth in business and technology in the aerospace and defense industries. My undergraduate degree is a Bachelor of Science in mechanical engineering from Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville. While there, I participated in ROTC, ASME, and Pi Tau Sigma. I took more than the minimum required number of classes, because of my passion for the field of engineering. My final undergraduate GPA was 3.5/4.0, and my course load was so aggressive I had to start taking graduate courses my senior year just to remain a full-time student. I was fortunate that my education was funded by the Montgomery GI bill, the Illinois Guard grant and a generous scholarship from the Boeing company. Nearly a year after finishing my bachelor’s degree, I’d finished half of my master’s degree requirements while working full-time and then decided to temporarily put that on hold to gain stronger footing in my engineering career away from school. I got to support Pratt & Whitney before a combustion engineering position supporting GE Power became available in South Carolina. After 4.5 years there, I was hired at Pratt & Whitney in East Hartford, CT where I resumed my master's, studying at UCONN. University policy only allowed a maximum of 2 transfer classes, so my previous progress towards my graduate degree was set back a few semesters, but it did force me to learn even more, for which I am ultimately better off. My specialty in this program was the thermal and fluid sciences track. Some highlights of my master’s program (at UConn & SIUE) have been computational fluid dynamics, combustion, structural optimization, (ordinary and partial) differential equations, advanced heat transfer, continuum mechanics, systems engineering and advanced stress analysis.