Featured News
We are proud to share that Prof. Damena Agonafer and Eric Wachsman have been named to Technical.ly’s RealLIST Innovators 2026. This recognition celebrates their work connecting engineering, energy, and artificial intelligence to address the infrastructure demands of a rapidly growing AI landscape. Through the University of Maryland’s Grand Challenges initiative, their collaboration brings together different […]
We are proud to share that Prof. Damena Agonafer has been named a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME). This distinction is among ASME’s highest honors and recognizes his contributions to mechanical engineering research and education. The University of Maryland’s Department of Mechanical Engineering announced the recognition on September 2, 2026. A […]
We are pleased to share that Dr. Damena Agonafer participated in a panel on responsible data center development at the third annual Maryland Data Center Summit, featured by the Maryland Tech Council. The discussion brought together perspectives on how Maryland can meet growing infrastructure needs while supporting communities and environmental sustainability. Moderated by J.D. Lambert, […]
We are proud to share that NEIT Lab’s Roshith Mittakolu and his collaborators received two awards at ITherm 2026 in Orlando, Florida: the Prof. Avram Bar-Cohen Best Paper Award in the System Level Thermal Management track and the Best E-Poster Award in the System Level and Data Center Thermal Management track. Their paper, “Towards 1 […]
We are proud to share that Vivek Manepalli has successfully defended his Ph.D. dissertation in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Maryland, College Park, marking an important milestone for both him and the NEIT Lab. Vivek’s research focused on advanced cooling technologies for high-power electronics, with an emphasis on direct-to-chip two-phase liquid cooling and data […]
We are proud to share that Kidus has successfully defended his Ph.D. thesis, marking an important milestone for both him and the NEIT Lab. Kidus’s research made impactful contributions to advanced thermal management at both the device and system levels. His thesis explored novel junction-level thermal management strategies for AlGaN ultra-wide bandgap (UWBG) electronics, addressing […]
Kidus Guye and Emils Jurcik represented the laboratory at the annual ASPIRE Conference, hosted at Nagoya University, where they presented their latest work on the thermal characterization of ultra- and wide-bandgap semiconductor devices. Their presentations highlighted ongoing efforts to understand near junction thermal management in next-generation power electronic materials. The ongoing work is funded by […]
On July 7th, 2024, several members of the NEIT Lab participated in the Northrop Grumman University Research Symposium held in Bethesda MD, showcasing their latest research through poster presentations. Representing the lab were Kidus Guye, Vivek Manepalli, Roshith Mittakolu, Alexander Lyons, Iman Louise, and Giovanina Bell. This opportunity came through our ongoing collaboration with Northrop […]
On June 5th, 2024, the NEIT Lab at the University of Maryland had the privilege of hosting Dr. Laurent Pilon, Program Manager at ARPA-E, and his colleague Dr. Thomas Bress. Dr. Pilon is overseeing our COOLERCHIPS project, and the visit was aimed at gaining a deeper understanding of our ongoing work in direct-to-chip evaporative cooling […]
We are excited to share that Dr. Damena Agonafer, Principal Investigator of the NEIT Lab, and Ph.D. student Vivek Manepalli have been awarded the 2025 Invention of the Year at Innovate Maryland, the University of Maryland’s annual celebration of research and innovation. They were recognized for their groundbreaking invention, done in collaboration with Northrop-Grumman: an […]
The NEIT Lab at the University of Maryland proudly participated in the 2025 ARPA-E Energy Innovation Summit in Washington, D.C., showcasing two breakthrough technologies developed under the ARPA-E COOLERCHIPS program. The Summit brought together top researchers, industry leaders, and policymakers to accelerate the commercialization of transformative energy technologies. As part of a collaborative effort with […]
The NEIT Lab proudly announces that its PI, Professor Damena Agonafer, has been awarded the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) for 2025. This is the highest honor bestowed by the United States government on outstanding early-career scientists and engineers. This prestigious recognition underscores Professor Agonafer’s groundbreaking contributions to thermal fluid sciences, interfacial transport phenomena, […]
Prof. Damena Agonafer, Director of the NEIT Lab, was an invited speaker at the 12th International Conference of the Materials Research Society, held in Kigali, Rwanda. Prof. Agonafer’s talk, delivered as part of the Sustainable Electronics track, addressed the critical challenges in next-generation thermal management technologies for state-of-the-art GPUs and CPUs used in AI/ML workloads […]
Kidus Guye presented his work on designing and modeling a novel hollow micropillar evaporator for high AI/ML workloads in state-of-the-art data centers for low PUE two-phase cooling. This work is part of the ARPA-e COOLERCHIPS project geared towards developing next-generation liquid cooling technologies with significantly low junction-to-coolant thermal resistance, with PUE lower than 1.02. Also […]
Dr. Vivek Pandey joins the NEIT Lab as a PostDoc to primarily support the effort to develop evaporative cooling cold plates for data centers and also advise the graduate students on other two-phase cooling technologies. He brings extensive experience building hybrid-cooled data centers and heat sink topology optimization from the National University of Singapore. We […]
Exciting new paper about 3-component composite PCM. Results suggest these composites outperform pure copper in reducing peak device temperatures under transient heat loads, showing promise for efficient thermal management in electronics. Pre-released version can be found here: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=10477652
We recently won the UMD-Northrop Grumman Innovation grant! We will be using the grant to study micro-encapsulated PCM slurry based microchannel cooling for high powered electronics.
Vivek presented his research on thermal and electro-mechanical modeling of vacuum field effect transistors at the North Atlantic Thermal Analysis Conference (NATAS). The conference was held in Rockville, Maryland in June 2023. This research is funded by AFOSR MURI on vacuum field effect nano-electronics.
Kidus Guye presented his work titled ‘Development of a Novel Direct-to-Chip Evaporator using Hollow Micropillars for Thermal Management in High Heat Flux Applications’ at NASA’s 34th Thermal & Fluids Analysis Workshop held in College Park from August 21-24. His work was very well received and he received second place in the poster presentation for a […]
Emils Jurcik joins NEIT lab this fall 2023 as a PhD student. He is co-advised by Prof. Samuel Graham and Prof. Agonafer. He got his undergraduate degree in Mechanical Engineering at Northwestern University and worked in the industry for a year prior to joining UMD. He will work on thermal management and thermal measurements of […]
Three new students join NEIT Lab starting this fall 2023. Emils Jurcik is a Ph.D. student (co-advised by Prof. Samuel Graham) starting in the NEIT lab in the fall of 2023. He will be working on the thermal management of WBG power electronics and thermal measurements of solid-state devices. Anagh Dave is a master’s student […]
Dr. Damena Agonafer was invited as a keynote speaker to the MicroFIP conference in Chicago. His talk titled – ‘Two-phase cooling for high heat flux applications’ included discussion on some of the state-of-the-art two phase thermal management systems and their challenges, NEIT lab evaporator technology, and the future work and operational challenges in implementing these […]
The NEIT Lab has secured two prestigious DARPA projects to advance thermal management in high power GaN RF devices. These projects aim to reduce device thermal resistance, improve power density, and enhance overall performance. In the first project, researchers will integrate high thermal conductivity dielectric materials with GaN RF transistors, enabling a better understanding of […]
The Nanoscale Energy and Interfacial Transport (NEIT) Lab, part of the Mechanical Engineering Department at the University of Maryland (UMD) College Park, is proud to announce its successful participation in the highly competitive COOLERCHIPS program by the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), a division of the U.S. Department of Energy. Out of a total of […]
Andoniaina Mariah Randriambololona joins NEIT lab as PhD student. She graduated from University of the District of Columbia in 2022 with a B.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering. She will be working on novel phase change materials, development of ML tools for CFD, and single phase immersion cooling.
Damena Agonafer, associate professor of mechanical engineering, has received the K16 2022 Outstanding Early Faculty Career in Thermal Management Award, given by the Electronic and Photonic Packaging Division of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME). The award, which recognizes talented young faculty with the potential for a transformative impact on the thermal field, was […]
Current Research
Featured Publications
Kong, D., Jung, E., Kim, Y., Manepalli, V. V., Rah, K. J., Kim, H. S., Hong, Y., Choi, H. G., Agonafer, D., and Lee, H., 2023, “An Additively Manufactured Manifold-Microchannel Heat Sink for High-Heat Flux Cooling,” International Journal of Mechanical Sciences, 248, p. 108228.
Kong, D., Kim, K., Kang, M., Hong, Y., Kim, H.S., Rah, K., Choi, G., Guye, G., Agonafer, D., Lee, H., “Thermal hydraulic design of 3D manifold microchannel heat sinks for energy-efficient thermal management systems”, Case Studies in Thermal Engineering, 2021, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.csite.2021.101583.
Guye, K., Dong, D., Kim, Y., Lee, H., Dogruoz, B., Agonafer, D., “Guidelines for designing micropillar structures for enhanced evaporative heat transfer”, Journal of Electronic Packaging, 2021, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1115/1.4052465.
Agonafer, D., Miljkovic, N., Spector M.A., “Materials and Interface Challenges and Opportunities in High Vapor Quality Two-Phase Flow Boiling Research.”, IEEE Components & Transactions, 2021, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/TCPMT.2021.3085255.