Patrick Huck
Senior Computing Engineer at Berkeley Lab
Emeryville, California, United States
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolPatrick Huck is a Senior Computing Engineer and PhD physicist who has spent 13 years building cloud-native infrastructure and data platforms to accelerate materials discovery from Berkeley Lab's Materials Project. He architects large-scale, production-grade systems—having led the migration of a decade-old monolith to AWS, established MPContribs and MPCite, and helped scale the platform to hundreds of thousands of users and DOE-designated PuRe Data Resource status. A high-energy experimentalist turned systems engineer, he blends deep domain knowledge (authored and parsed millions of DFT calculations) with hands-on backend development on influential open-source projects like pymatgen that power materials science workflows. Patrick is frequently responsible for technical direction, team mentorship, and cross-organization knowledge transfer, and he has a track record of securing funding and operationalizing data stewardship (AWS OpenData, OSTI DOIs). Based in Emeryville, CA, he combines rigorous scientific training and production engineering to make complex computational science reliably reproducible and broadly accessible.
13 years of coding experience
17 years of employment as a software developer
Diploma (e.g. Master of Science), Physics, with distinction, Diploma (e.g. Master of Science), Physics, with distinction at Technische Universität MünchenDoctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), High Energy Nuclear Physics, Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), High Energy Nuclear Physics at Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am MainGeneral Qualification for University Entrance, General Qualification for University Entrance at Raichberg-Gymnasium Ebersbach (High-School)
Github Skills (9)
apim10
rest-api10
pymatgen10
api10
science10
data-parsing10
python10
materials-informatics10
unit-testing9
Programming languages (12)
Github contributions (5)
materialsproject/pymatgen
Sep 2014 - Nov 2019
Python Materials Genomics (pymatgen) is a robust materials analysis code that defines classes for structures and molecules with support for many electronic structure codes. It powers the Materials Project.
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:1 review, 27 commits, 10 PRs in 5 years 3 months
Contributions summary:Patrick primarily contributed to the backend of the pymatgen library, focusing on features related to materials analysis and data retrieval. They implemented and modified functionalities for parsing and handling specific file formats (FEFF, DYNMAT), integrating with the Materials Project REST API to retrieve data and expanding the functionalities of existing modules, especially those related to the Materials Project. The contributions also include unit tests for added functionalities and corrections, showcasing a focus on improving the library's capabilities for materials science workflows.
moleculespythonscienceelectronic-structurepowers
tschaume/emmet
Apr 2018 - Mar 2020
Be a master builder of databases of material properties. Avoid the Kragle.
Contributions:94 pushes, 4 branches in 1 year 11 months
propertiesmasterbuilderdatabasesdatabase
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