Shane Deighton’s
Professional Portfolio

Examining the “invisible” to enjoy the big picture: From atoms to molecules to helping the planet. What’s next? Helping protect behind the scenes as an Actuary.

Where I’m Going - Directly Relevant Projects

SQL and Database Management

My Contributions

  • Project 100% my personal work

  • Designed, mapped, and implemented a database from scratch using SQL

    • Purpose was to track customers at a health/spa service provider and to learn to analyze and visualize desired metrics

  • Implemented a dimensional data warehouse model containing three fact tables covering sales revenue, hotel revenue, and customer time spent on activities

  • Used SQL to perform data manipulation and calculations, including RFM analysis

R and R Studio

My Contributions

  • Project 100% my personal work

  • Used RStudio to perform multiple linear regression analysis on 36,733 hours of emissions data to predict the concentration of NOx compounds in a gas turbine’s exhaust

    • Business question examined: which predictor variables most influence NOx emissions, and can be focused on in pursuit of lowering pollutant emissions

  • Went above course expectations by developing three separate models rather than just one.

    • The course did not cover the additional sophistications of time-series data analysis, and so instead I developed and compared the following to identify the best option:

      • Modeling the entire dataset

      • Modeling separate “seasons” of the data

      • Modeling using a single year of data

Strategic Analysis of a Business and Its Environment

My Contributions

  • Analyses 100% my personal work

  • Studied a wide variety of sources to perform an in-depth analysis of the oil & gas industry

Where I’ve Been - Success at Current Employer

Peer-Reviewed Publications

Elucidated the conditions occurring at a metal/oil interface in the presence of friction-reducing additives, helping advance core understandings and requirements for the effectiveness of said additives

My Contributions

  • Performed all powder adsorption experiments, including the initial determination of an appropriate method

  • Carried out the vast majority of the friction measurements described

  • Assisted with QCM measurements

Demonstrated that common practice in QCM measurements often did not adequately account for solvent interference effects - showing that previous data may have needed significant adjustments to reflect the true mass adsorbed at an interface

My Contributions

  • Carried out microbalance adsorption experiments

Eliminated 80% of the energy required for post-combustion CO2 capture by optimizing a novel, solvent-free CO2 adsorption system

Note: Science Advances is a highly impactful journal - as of August 2025 it is ranked #2 in the category of “Multidisciplinary Sciences” by Top Quartile Citation Count

My Contributions

  • Worked with engineers to design and build the automated version of our prototype system, increasing experimental throughput

  • Performed the vast majority of the actual physical CO2 adsorption experiments described in the paper

  • Used IGOR software to analyze the collected data and generate many of the plots within the paper

    • Corrected raw data for signal drift by subtracting an exponential function

    • Integrated gas composition signals over time to determine volumes of CO2 adsorbed (or released)

Patents Granted

Patents Pending

  • 1 patent application in progress for work related to carbon capture (details prevented by NDA at this time)

  • 1 patent application in progress for work related to lithium extraction / purification (details prevented by NDA at this time)

Next Step

Recognizing that:

  • I have already passed 2 actuarial exams

  • Some time has passed since my SQL and R projects

My current focus is on brushing up on technical skills before pursuing a 3rd exam. To that end, I will be seeking further practice/certifications in SQL, R, and VBA