The NEIT Lab congratulates Ph.D. candidate Roshith Mittakolu and his collaborators on receiving the Best Paper Award in the Data Center Sustainability track at the 2026 Open Compute Project (OCP) Future Technologies Symposium in San Jose, California. Roshith presented the paper, “Towards Sustainable AI Data Centers Through Direct Waste Heat Recovery Enabled by Membrane-Assisted Heat Sink Technology,” at the OCP Global Summit.

The work explores how advanced chip cooling can turn data center waste heat into a useful energy resource for surrounding communities. Using software developed in Prof. Damena Agonafer’s research group, Roshith performed system-level modeling of membrane-assisted heat sink (MHS) technology developed by Prof. Saeed Moghaddam’s group at the University of Florida.

The modeled architecture achieved a primary-loop outlet temperature of 70°C, creating opportunities for direct heat recovery for suitable campus and district heating loads without a heat pump to raise the temperature. In the modeled comparison, heat-recovery auxiliary power was more than 50 times lower than in heat-pump-dependent approaches. These findings apply to the MHS architecture and operating conditions studied; they are not full-year energy-savings estimates.

The collaboration includes Roshith Mittakolu, Ibaad Gandikota, Prof. Patrick McCluskey, Prof. Saeed Moghaddam, and Prof. Damena Agonafer. The work was supported by ARPA-E’s COOLERCHIPS program.

This recognition follows the group’s Best Paper Award at the previous year’s symposium for its direct-to-chip evaporative cooler (DCEC) technology. Together, these efforts advance the lab’s goal of integrating cooling and heat recovery into data center design, making waste heat a resource that can benefit communities.

Congratulations to Roshith and the team, and thank you to OCP and the Future Technologies Symposium organizers for recognizing this work!