PEA Clean Energy Intern Caila Cater-Edwards sat down with Jonathan Witt, who is a Data Scientist at Recurrent, an electric vehicle startup where he applies his unique blend of technical expertise and passion for climate action. His career journey is a testament to the power of a non-linear path, one that seamlessly connects science, public policy, and environmental advocacy.
Dr. Witt will be at PEA's Green Job Fair on Wednesday, September 17th as a green career mentor. Join us so you can chat 1:1 with Dr. Witt and other green sector leaders. Admission is free and you can RSVP here.
CCE: Hi Jon! I want to thank you for taking the time to talk with me about your role as a Data Scientist at Recurrent. I have heard wonderful things about the work you do and am glad to offer multiple perspectives on the Green World to readers. Your journey is both unique and inspiring, having a technical background as well as experience in public policy and lobbying for environmental justice, now working with electric vehicles. Can you tell us about your path into this field? How have your past experiences in both science and policy shaped the work you're doing today?
JW: Hi! Thanks for having me. Well if I were to think about my path to this field, I’d have to go back to high school I think. I went to high school in Maryland and my particular county was offering these skills track programs. Think engineering, healthcare, veterinarian… stuff like that. Basically it was a guide as to what electives I should take in high school to best set me up for success in a specific field I was interested in. I chose the engineering one because I liked building things out of wood in my basement as a kid. My sophomore year, one of those engineering classes tasked us with interviewing someone who was currently in a specific engineering field. When I went to sign up, one of the fields left to choose from was “Chemical Engineering”. I remember thinking, that sounds neat, I kind of like chemistry. I found someone to interview and thought their experience seemed fun (though I do forget exactly what they did). As a sophomore I certainly wasn’t ready to commit to a certain engineering field, but when my family members would ask me what I wanted to do when I went to college, I didn’t really know what to say, so I’d just say chemical engineering.
Now when it came to college, none of the colleges I applied to required me to say what major I wanted to do; most don’t require you to choose a major until your sophomore year. But, I said I was interested in chemical engineering, so the university I ended up going to, Lehigh University, paired me with a chemical engineering professor as my academic advisor. That turned out to be quite fortuitous for me as it turned out that the professor's academic research focused on clean energy, particularly fuel cell materials development.
That wasn’t the only thing that influenced me the moment I got to campus. Lehigh also offered pre-orientation programs to meet people who shared similar interests. I wanted to do the pre-orientation program that had a whole bunch of kayaking and outdoor games. But I waited too long and the slots filled up. I saw that SustainabLehigh had some openings left and it mentioned a canoe trip so I signed up for that. That group taught incoming students all about sustainability, food systems, etc. I thought it was really cool, and I was hired to do a work study with the Sustainability Office at Lehigh afterwards.
So throughout college, I’m getting this technical influence from my academic advisor and I’m getting an understanding of sustainability practices from my work study job. I also joined the Engineering Without Borders (EWB) student chapter at Lehigh. What I learned from working on campus and the stories from EWB was that you really need community buy-in for a technology or practice to be really adopted. A senior was telling me that a previous EWB project failed because they hadn’t accounted for the taste of chlorine being a reason that someone might not want to drink clean water. The project hadn’t accounted for the human factor.
Eventually I joined my academic professors lab and started doing research under the guidance of graduate students. I thought it was challenging but rewarding work. I also soon realized that most Chemical Engineers are hired to work in the oil and gas industry after they get their bachelor's degree. After all I had learned about the impact of oil and gas on our ecosystem, I really was not interested in working in that field. I saw going to grad school as the way out and my professor encouraged me to apply.
I ended up getting accepted to the University of Washington’s Chemical Engineering graduate program for my PhD. I chose there because it had the most clean energy projects and the Clean Energy Institute had just gotten up and running there. I ended up doing my PhD working on hardware to study the conversion of CO2 into carbon monoxide (CO) using fuel cells and electrolyzers. While my research was super fundamental, the idea was to inform future applications of recycling CO2 in the atmosphere to products we use.
While I thought my research was impactful, I knew that research takes a long time to make it into industry. In my spare time I volunteered for different groups to help push forward policies that should help reduce the impacts of climate change. A few times I joined clean tech lobbyists in Olympia (Washington State's capitol) to speak to legislators about the importance of cleaner energy and policies. On my own, I went out knocking doors to help pass voter initiatives that would’ve lowered carbon emissions in Washington State. I also worked on a white paper for the Washington State Academy of Sciences as part of a small fellowship facilitated through the Clean Energy Institute.
As graduation neared, I started working part time for a start-up named Recurrent whose CEO I had spoken to a few times since he was part of the Clean Energy Institute. The company idea was basically trying to help sell used electric vehicles by providing user friendly technical information about them and their performance. And we were studying live electric vehicles on the road. Funny enough, while I understood electrochemistry and could transfer that knowledge from fuel cells to batteries, most of the job required coding skills, which I had only a little bit of analyzing my own research data. I helped Recurrent win a National Science Foundation SBIR Phase I grant and was hired on to help analyze the data from the experiment we ran. That involved a lot of code learning, and afterwards I was kept on full time and directly integrated into the data science team at Recurrent. Ultimately it was a great fit.
At a start-up, we all wear many hats. I can’t just work on data science and electrochemistry, but I also need to be thinking about how people use our products. I like to think that all my time volunteering on public advocacy has really given me a better understanding of how people interact with new policies and technology, and what’s the best way to communicate those things. Oftentimes I collaborate with our product team to understand our customers needs and how our data science tools can best meet those needs without sacrificing technical accuracy.
CCE:That's a fantastic story, Jon! It’s fascinating how seemingly small moments – like signing up late for a program or choosing a project on a whim – can end up shaping the course of our lives in such meaningful ways. It really speaks to the beauty of those unexpected turns.
Your journey resonated deeply – I’m sure many readers will feel the same. I personally discovered my own interest in sustainability in high school after a guest speaker visited my culinary class, so I can relate to how one moment can spark a lasting passion.
It’s especially inspiring to hear that your commitment extended beyond the lab. Using your personal time to advocate for climate policies shows just how powerful individual action can be, something accessible to anyone, and often more impactful than we realize.
Reflecting on your story, you mentioned that while you knew you wanted to pursue engineering, you weren’t initially sure which field was the right fit – a feeling I know many career seekers share. Looking back, what advice would you give to your younger self, or what are a few things you wish you had known then that might resonate with those navigating their own paths now?
JW: Great question. This is probably a question the Lehigh Engineering department had in mind too. They had all the first years interested in engineering take this class that allowed them to do and explore projects in at least three fields. I think I remember doing a project in materials engineering, industrial engineering, and chemical engineering. Materials and chemical engineering have many overlapping similarities so I basically chose two similar and one very different just to get an idea of what the field was like. I also met a few juniors studying environmental engineering and mechanical engineering and I asked them about their majors and the kind of projects they worked on. Ultimately, I think I realized that no matter which engineering field I had chosen, there was a chance that I could apply those skills to making the world a more sustainable place. It therefore was not so obvious which field I should choose. I also considered earnings potential but they were all pretty similar. Given that I was assigned a professor from chemical engineering as a course counselor, and he seemed like a good mentor, I think I just took a chance and continued with coursework in that field.
A piece of my advice is to start with a vision of what you want to accomplish. It can be as vague or as specific as you want. Obviously being more specific helps narrow down options, but I started with something more vague. When I was a senior in high school I felt a calling to help people and animals. I was actually trying to decide between pursuing being a veterinarian or an engineer. To help me decide, I asked the vet that took care of my dogs if I could shadow him. He said yes and it sure was an interesting few weeks. Ultimately I decided it wasn’t for me. I recommend that folks find people whose career path is interesting to them and ask them about that career path. Find places to shadow, intern, or just get some experience or understanding of what it might be like to work in a certain field. It’s really helpful. Figure out how people got to where they are. Sometimes it’s straightforward and sometimes it’s a meandering path. Tell people about your passions and you’ll often find that someone knows someone else who does that thing.
Finally, I’d recommend not getting too hung up on any specific decision you make. Circumstances change and you change as you grow and learn. I know plenty of people who pursued chemical engineering bachelors degrees and now work in finance. They transferred those thinking and problem solving skills from their engineering degree to something else. Many people pivot, including myself. I didn’t think I’d be coding as a data scientist as I pursued my undergrad and my PhD. I was open to an opportunity that came along and I pivoted.
CCE: Wonderful advice, Jon! I think in any component of life it is important to learn the art of pivoting. Being open to new ideas and allowing yourself to go on journeys you never expected. Thank you for that!
Given your journey from chemical engineering to data science, all while staying within the clean energy sector, I imagine you've witnessed many emerging ideas and evolving career opportunities.What are some recent trends or innovations in the clean energy space that you're particularly excited about? Are there any career paths you see growing rapidly or likely to be in high demand in the near future?
JW: There are a few developments that come to mind when I think of emerging ideas and trends. I’m particularly excited about all the developments in home energy efficiency and electrification of our homes and businesses. For example, Li-ion batteries and solar have become order of magnitude cheaper over the last decade. I hope to see these trends continue. These trends have already proven to be economical and quick to deploy for utilities and large businesses. There is an exciting future where most homes have highly efficient heat pumps, solar panels producing energy, and their EVs providing back up power to their homes and also selling energy to the grid in times of extreme heat or cold. In such a world, our energy infrastructure will be quite distributed and resilient! There is going to be an ever increasing demand for folks in the trades, especially electricians. I highly recommend that career.
I am particularly excited about solid and semi-solid state batteries. These are batteries that replace the liquid electrolyte between the positive and negative ends of the battery with a solid. The reward of doing so is much faster charging and higher energy density. That translated into EV fill up times less than 10 minutes long and ranges of 400+ miles. Some car companies are already experimenting with these kinds of batteries in test vehicles and if I recall correctly, there may already be a vehicle very recently launched in China with one. Because they are so much more energy dense than today’s batteries, they will also mean less weight to be added to the vehicle in order to achieve more range. There are so many more battery chemistries that are on the way too! One that comes to mind is sodium Ion batteries are really cheap and less sensitive to temperature. There probably isn’t much out there cheaper than sodium!
I’ve also been keeping an eye on the home energy efficiency front. It’s sort of a hobby of mine. I’ve found windows that I can buy today, manufactured in the US by Alpen Windows, that have similar insulation properties to walls. I’ve gotten a quote and I didn’t think they were outrageously expensive, though they certainly are more expensive than a standard vinyl R2 window from Lowes or Home Depot.
I’m also really excited about less expensive geothermal energy. Geothermal energy is an ultra efficient way to cool and heat one's home since it uses the ground temperature to regulate temperature instead of the air. There is this innovative company named Dandelion energy out of the Northeast that seems like they have been installing more affordable geothermal systems for folks. I look forward to seeing them come to North Carolina.
Alright now regarding solar innovation, I’m very excited about perovskite based solar cells. They’ve been in the works for awhile but they promise higher efficiency than the ones on the market today. They are often also deposited onto solar substrates using a liquid. At the University of Washington, I knew plenty of colleagues studying how to commercialize them and produce them at scale.
One emerging technology that I’ve seen a lot of hype build up for has been hydrogen energy storage and use. I think I’ve observed that for most use cases, like cars and trucks, batteries have been getting so good and are much cheaper, that hydrogen likely isn’t going to fuel those areas of technology. However, clean hydrogen is needed to decarbonize the production of fertilizers like ammonia. Most of the hydrogen used to make ammonia comes from natural gas. I hope one day we have enough innovation to produce hydrogen from electrolyzing water in an economical way. I personally worked a lot on electrolyzers in my PhD.
I’d say finally, given that my current daily focus is in coding and data science, I can’t ignore the impact that all of these AI companies are already having. It really does look like it is going to be harder to break into the coding and programming space as a junior engineer going forward. These tools are really good. These AI tools require a lot of data centers and those data centers require a lot of energy. I’m well aware of all the AI risks, so I’ll just say here that I hope that AI helps us accelerate innovation in energy management and materials discovery.
In general, I see a particularly bright future in the trades and construction. A lot of stuff needs to get built and we are gonna need a lot of people to do it! We will also need to make sure our supply chain for clean energy materials is reliable. Therefore, I suspect that a lot of manufacturing in the battery and EV space will continue to increase across the US.
CCE: I can definitely share the excitement for home electrification, especially since assisting the PEA team with preparation for their Electrify the Triad campaign! What you mentioned on using geothermal to source the home's energy is intriguing. I will definitely have to do some more research on that.
Jon, thank you so much for this thoughtful interview. It has been an absolute pleasure to talk with you some! You have provided a wealth of information and I know the readers will enjoy this read.