I second the vote for choosing fabrics with a fun "tech" pattern, rather than doing a particular quilt pattern, so the engineering/science theme is in the details rather than the big picture.
And I'm speaking as an engineer ;-)
Several years ago I made a quilt and there was a fabric design called "paper bag" that had tech notebook-inspired calculations and diagrams. Much like the doodles a techie might do on their napkin at lunch (yes, we had lunchtime scratch paper in the cafeteria).