Spotlight on Badger Alumni: Mechanical Engineer Brad Moore

Mechanical Engineering alum Brad Moore earned his BS, MS, and PhD degrees from UW-Madison over the course of 2007 to 2025. The incredible span of his experiences demonstrate how learning is for life, and being a Badger is for life.

Tell us about your time on campus! Which degrees do you have? How did you decide on ME?

I first came to UW in September 2007. I had engineering in my head simply because my older brother had done ME at UW years before and while I didn’t quite know what I wanted to do, I was good at math and science. I started out on the Engineering Physics path, leaning into computer science. But when I began my sophomore year and took my first “real engineering class” – Statics – I was hooked on the practical application of physics to the real world. At that point I decided to focus on Mechanical Engineering. Later in my degree, I ended up in Professor Franklin Miller’s Thermodynamics class and that really clicked. It was just the right blend of physics and Miller was a fantastic lecturer. I ended up working in his lab and staying for an MS with him working on a cryogenic check valve. An expert in the niche field of cryogenic engineering turned out to be exactly what NASA-JPL (Jet Propulsion Lab) needed when I graduated in 2013, and Miller’s connections to NASA certainly helped. After an intervening career of 11 years, I returned to UW for my PhD with Miller as my advisor again and with Professor Greg Nellis as my co-advisor. I was able to continue to work at JPL while working on my PhD at UW and recently graduated in Dec 2025.

What can you share with us about your career path?

In that “intervening career” I alluded to, I’ve had fantastic opportunities to “Dare Mighty Things” (JPL’s motto). I started working at JPL in 2013 on the test campaign for the Cryocooler on the Mid Infrared Instrument (MIRI) on the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and continued on that mission for another 7 years. I shepherded the flight (we call the unit that is launched into space “flight” in aerospace) and flight spare through all of their testing at JPL and integration into the observatory. It was a sight to behold when the mirrors were deployed at Northrop Grumman!

After JWST, I supported both small projects and small parts of large projects. I helped put a Mass Spectrometer air monitor on the International Space Station called SAM (acronym now updated to SCRAM). I participated in an airborne campaign in the Arctic. I had the opportunity to “touch” other flagship missions by providing lower level specific task support on Europa Clipper and Mars Science Laboratory.

Another big opportunity presented itself with SPHEREx (Spectro-Photometer for the History of the universe and Epoch of Reionization Explorer). I started as a thermal support engineer and was promoted to the payload thermal lead. SPHEREx successfully launched on March 11, 2025 and cooled down 45 Kelvin, becoming the current coldest passively-cooled instrument in low earth orbit. I am still involved in monitoring in-flight data and the instrument has operated perfectly for the last year.

What are some of the experiences throughout your career that have been most interesting to you? What are you most proud of so far? What are you looking forward to?

For me, there are two things that I’m most proud of, for different reasons. I’ll always look back on my contributions to JWST with awe at my fortune for being a part of something so historic. I was a small part of a massive effort from so many brilliant people and it was immensely humbling. I will never forget waking up at 4AM (PST) on Christmas Day 2021 to watch the launch… And then I had to wait 70 days for the cryocooler to be turned on and tell me that my contribution was a success. 

On JWST, I had great ownership of my small part, but it was still a small part of a much larger whole. The second accomplishment that I am most proud of was playing a very large part in a much smaller mission, SPHEREx. As the thermal lead for most of the project duration, I was involved in every detail of the thermal system. And since it was a single instrument payload with a passive cryogenic system, thermal was interwoven with essentially every part of the observatory. From every angle of the photon shields to thickness of the strut composite, I can look back fondly on the argument…erm discussion… that our team had about that detail. And if you want to know any more about it, read my thesis!

The upcoming work that I’m most excited for is an astrophysics proposal called PRIMA. It will have instruments operating at 100mK (0.1 degree C above absolute 0) to conduct observations in Infrared wavelengths well beyond and in compliment to JWST. I’m slated to be the thermal lead of the passive cooling component, but I also intend to contribute to the cryocooler component to come full circle to my early career work. I’m confident that our team will win the proposal for the next phase of the mission. And when it launches I’ll have worked on observatories for essentially every wavelength from 750nm to 264um.

Please discuss how UW shaped you into the person and engineer you are today.

I’ll always appreciate that UW did not teach me what to think, but how to think. An example of this: I had many friends at different universities that learned how to use commercial software packages to do thermal analysis. I was always impressed by the complexity of the problems that they could solve, while I was hard coding matlab solution routines in Professor Nellis’s heat transfer class. But once I was thrust into industry, I found that those packages were actually quite simple to learn. Additionally, because I had a deep understanding of how the software worked at a root level I was able to push its capabilities well beyond what many others were able to do. Beyond just software, I came from UW with hands-on knowledge of lab hardware and how to apply a first principles approach to the real world.

This approach to solving problems has made UW grads very attractive candidates for jobs at institutions like JPL. I know of six other UW ME SEL alumni that have been hired into the cryogenics group at JPL, and countless others that have come through as interns.

What tips and advice do you have for current students interested in taking a path like yours?

This is going to sound cliché, but follow your passion. I truly enjoy what I’m doing in the lab or at a terminal (most) days. For me, it hasn’t been about padding a resume, or doing whatever it takes to get a specific job at a specific place; it has been about what I’m doing day to day. That isn’t to say some days aren’t a complete grind – you do have to eat your vegetables at times. Another piece of advice: I know it’s a challenge with all of the AI tools available, but don’t always take the easy way out, especially when you’re at the phase in your career during which you’re building up your skills. Something to remember in these tumultuous times is that no matter what happens in the external economy, you will always carry your mind with you. I believe if you truly care about what you’re doing, be it studying a niche microbe in the Arctic, or pursuing a very specific and low temperature range in thermal engineering, you’ll be successful. And you’ll be surprised where you end up. I know I was!

Anything else you’d like to share?

I just want to thank UW, the ME department, and Professors Franklin Miller and Greg Nellis for giving me the opportunity to return to UW after so many years. It was a difficult decision and a difficult implementation to return to school for my PhD. I definitely felt like the old guy in class; I was an undergrad with current faculty Professor Eric Tervo and Professor Allison Mahvi. But learning is for life, and being a Badger is for life.

Featured image: A much younger Moore on the 13th floor of the ERB with the cryostat containing his M.S. research.