Christopher H. J. Moran
P.hD. Student
I'm originally from the Washington DC area, having grown up mostly in Northern Virginia, although I spent roughly half of my childhood overseas in the Middle East and North Africa during my father's diplomatic assignments. Since I was a small child, I’ve always been utterly fascinated by the natural world and physical phenomena, and this translated into a deep-seated interest in chemistry while I was in high school, as well as my freshman year of college. As an undergraduate at George Mason University, I studied computer science, and after that I spent almost two years working as a software engineer in Northern Virginia before moving to North Carolina to pursue a PhD in chemical engineering at NCSU. My current work in the Abolhasani Group entails fusing the skills I’ve accrued as a software engineer and the knowledge I'm continuing to acquire in my chemical engineering studies, and using the combination of the two to build self-driving labs for drug discovery and characterization, as well as for the accelerated discovery of clean energy materials and nanoparticles. Additionally, I have tangential interests in polymers, drug delivery systems, and pharmacology: especially pharmacodynamics. My hobbies include 3D modeling (Fusion 360), 3D printing, learning new languages (特に日本語), as well as trying different—and ever more exotic—methods of brewing coffee, with siphon brewing being my current favorite.