Pete Benbow
James B. Duke Assistant Professor of Practice in Data Science
Education
- B.A., Davidson College
Areas of Expertise
- Data engineering
- Business intelligence
- Data analytics
Background
I’m just an average guy who loves using data to build cool stuff! My specialties are data engineering and business intelligence (BI), two disciplines that complement and facilitate the work of data scientists. Data engineering focuses on developing infrastructure to collect, process, and store large volumes of information, such as databases and data pipelines. I often like to say that data engineers are the unsung heroes who make data science possible. Meanwhile, BI bridges the gap between data engineering and data science by borrowing from a bit of both disciplines, including analytics, visualization, and even machine learning.
Prior to teaching, I applied these skills professionally across multiple industries, including law, healthcare, insurance, finance, and the non-profit sector. I’ve held roles ranging from individual contributor all the way up to director, with work that spanned financial modeling, software development, and even product management. I joined the Davidson faculty in 2024.
Although data is my profession, my academic background is actually in the social sciences and humanities. I graduated from Davidson with a degree in political science, including a summer abroad at the University of Cambridge where I studied literature and political philosophy. One of my strongest convictions is that a liberal arts education is the ideal platform for cultivating well-rounded technologists, and I’m incredibly lucky to teach these skills at my alma mater!
Beyond the classroom, I have led local and virtual workshops and presented at national conferences on a variety of technical topics, and I teach online data skills courses for Davidson in partnership with edX. My courses on SQL databases and Microsoft Power BI have reached over 200,000 learners worldwide since 2020.
Outside of work, I enjoy fly-fishing, hiking, voraciously consuming vast amounts of fantasy and science-fiction media, and traveling with my wife. I’m also a strong supporter of environmental and wildlife conservation causes.
Teaching
- CSC 110: Data Science & Society
- DAT 153: Database Programming