About the Editor

Ray Hoobler, PhD, MBA, is the founder and principal of Semoctuo LLC, a consulting firm dedicated to empowering business development and marketing professionals with practical data visualization and analytics skills. Through Semoctuo, Ray develops tools and training programs that transform raw data into clear, compelling visualizations — enabling teams to communicate with impact.

Ray brings more than 20 years of industry experience spanning technical and management roles. Most recently, he served as a director of technical program and project management at Applied Materials, Inc., where he directed custom educational initiatives with prestigious research universities across North America and Asia and developed an online course focused on skills for developing machine learning in Python. He served as program director for the Professional Science Masters programs at the University of Utah (2016–2022), where he worked collaboratively with faculty to restructure curricula across Biotechnology, Data Science, and Environmental Science to align coursework with the programs’ stated STEM and business (management and leadership) competency goals.

Since 2017, Ray has taught professional and technical courses for the University of Utah’s PSM program, including the Applied Statistical Techniques course. His teaching philosophy emphasizes competency-based learning approaches that help professionals master technical concepts incrementally and apply them directly to real-world challenges. Ray holds a Ph.D. in Chemistry from Penn State University, an MBA from Western Governors University, and a B.S. in Chemistry from Marshall University. Prior to his industry career, he held academic positions as a Postdoctoral Research Associate at JILA, University of Colorado, Boulder, and as an Assistant Professor of Chemistry at the University of South Alabama.