Recent 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

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