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Department Head/Professor
Evelyn Wang
Department Head; Ford Professor of Engineering
Interests
- Thermal management, energy conversion, and storage
- Nanoengineered surfaces and materials
- Water harvesting, purification, and conservation
Professor Wang News + Media
Drinking Water from From Air
A device developed by Evelyn Wang's team harvests clean drinking water from vapor in the air, even in the most arid conditions.
System can sterilize medical tools using solar heat
A device developed by graduate student Lin Zhao, Professor Evelyn Wang, and Professor Gang Chen, could provide pressurized steam to run autoclaves without the need for electricity in off-grid areas.
Simple, solar-powered water desalination
A passive solar-powered desalination system developed by Professor Evelyn Wang and Professor John Lienhard achieves a new level of efficiency in harnessing sunlight to make fresh potable water from seawater.
Faculty Details
Education
-
2000
MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY (MIT)
B.Eng. -
2001
STANFORD UNIVERSITY
M.Sc. -
2006
STANFORD UNIVERSITY
Ph.D.
Research Interests
- Heat and mass transfer
- Energy efficient systems
- Water harvesting, purification, and conservation
- Micro and nano devices
Honors + Awards
- (Select Honors and Awards)
- 2021 AAAS Fellow
- 2020, ICNMM Prominent Researcher Award
- 2017, ASME Gustus L. Larson Memorial Award
- 2017, Foreign Policy's 2017 Global ReThinker
- 2017, MIT Technology Review 1 of 10 Breakthrough Technologies
- 2017, Scientific American and World Economic Forum 1 of 10 Emerging Technologies
- 2017, MIT Committed to Caring Award
- 2016, ASME Electronics Packaging and Photonics Division Women of the Year Award
- 2015, ASME Fellow
- 2012 ASME Bergles-Rohsenow Young Investigator Award in Heat Transfer
- 2012, ONR Young Investigator Award
- 2011, AFOSR Young Investigator Award
- 2008, DARPA Young Faculty Award
Memberships
- Tau Beta Pi Engineering Honor Society
- Pi Tau Sigma Mechanical Engineering Honor Society
- American Society of Mechanical Engineers (Fellow)
- American Physical Society
- Society of Women Engineers
- Materials Research Society
- American String Teachers Association
Professional Service
- (Select Professional Service)
- 2013, Track Organizer, ASME International Conference of Micro/Nanoscale Heat and Mass Transfer
- 2013, Co-Organizer, International Workshop on Micro Nanostructures for Phase-Change Heat Transfer
- 2013, Guest Co-Editor, Special issue in Nanoscale and Microscale Thermophysical Engineering
- 2014, Technical Program Committee, IEEE NEMS 2014
- 2014, Guest Editor, Annual Review of Heat Transfer Volume 18
- 2015, Track Organizer, Interpack and ASME International Conference of Micro/Nanoscale Heat and Mass Transfer
- 2015, Symposium Co-Organizer, Materials Research Society Fall Meeting
- 2015, Vice-Chair and Co-Organizer, Gordon Research Conference, Micro and Nano Structures for Phase-Change Heat Transfer
- 2014-present, Associate Editor, Nanoscale and Microscale Thermophysical Engineering
- 2015, Executive Committee, Transducers 2015
- 2016, Co-Chair, ASME International Conference of Nanoscale, Microscale, and Minichannels
- 2017, Chair, Gordon Research Conference for Micro and Nano Structures for Phase-Change Heat Transfer
- 2017, Chair, ASME International Conference of Nanoscale, Microscale, and Minichannels
- 2017, Scientific Advisory Board, NSF Engineering Research Center for Power Optimization of Electro- Thermal Systems (POETS)
- 2017-present, Associate Editor, Journal of Heat Transfer
- 2018-present, Defense Science Study Group (DSSG)
MIT Service
- (Select MIT Service)
- 2018-present Mechanical Engineering Department Head
- 2016-2017 MechE Strategic Planning Co-Chair
- 2014-2018, Co-Chair, MechE Lincoln Labs Task Force
Teaching
- Thermal-Fluids Engineering I (2.005)
- Thermal-Fluids Engineering II (2.006)
- Intermediate Heat Transfer (2.51)
- Advanced Heat Transfer (2.55)
Publications
- (Select Publications)
- Chu, K.-H., Xiao, R., and E.N. Wang, “Uni-directional Spreading on Asymmetric Nanostructured Surfaces,” Nature Materials, 9, 413-417, 2010.
- Miljkovic, N. Enright, R., and E.N. Wang, "Effect of Droplet Morphology on Growth Dynamics and Heat Transfer during Condensation on Superhydrophobic Nanostructured Surfaces," ACS Nano, 6(2), 1776-1785, 2012.
- Chu, K.H., Enright, R., and E.N. Wang, “Structured Surfaces for Enhanced Pool Boiling Heat Transfer,” Applied Physics Letters, 100(24), 241603, 2012.
- Miljkovic, N, Enright, R., Nam, Y., Lopez, K., Dou, N., Sack, J., and E.N. Wang, “Jumping-Droplet-Enhanced Condensation on Scalable Superhydrophobic Nanostructured Surfaces,” Nano Letters, 13(1), 179-187, 2013.
- Adera, S, Raj, R., Enright, R., and E.N. Wang, “Non-Wetting Droplets on Hot Superhydrophilic Surfaces,” Nature Communications, 4, 2013.
- Miljkovic, N., Preston, D.J., Enright, R., and E.N. Wang, “Electrostatic Charging of Jumping Droplets on Superhydrophobic Surfaces,” Nature Communications, 4, 2013.
- Lenert, A., Bierman, D.M., Nam, Y.-S., Chan, W.R., Celanovic, I., Soljacic, M., and E.N. Wang, “A Nanophotonic Solar Thermophotovoltaic Device.” Nature Nanotechnology, 9(2), p. 126-130, 2014.
- Zhu, Y., Antao, D.S., Xiao, R., and E.N. Wang, "Real-Time Manipulation with Magnetically Tunable Structures," Advanced Materials, 26(37), p. 6442-6446, 2014.
- Enright, R., Miljkovic, N., Sprittles, J., Nolan, K., Mitchell, R., and E.N. Wang, “How Coalescing Droplets Jump,” ACS Nano, 8(10), p. 10352–10362, 2014.
- Raj, R., Adera, S., Enright, R., and E.N. Wang, “High-resolution Liquid Patterns via Three-Dimensional Droplet Shape Control,” Nature Communications, 5, 4975, 2014.
- Cho, H.J., Mizerak, J.P., and E.N. Wang, "Turning Bubbles On and Off During Boiling Using Charged Surfactants," Nature Communications, 6, 2015.
- Cho, H.J., Preston, D.J., Zhu, Y., and E.N. Wang, "Nanoengineered Materials for Liquid–vapour Phase-change Heat Transfer," Nature Reviews Materials, 2, p. 16092, 2016.
- Bierman, D.M., A. Lenert, W.R. Chan, B. Bhatia, I. Celanovic, M. Soljacic, and E.N. Wang, "Enhanced Photovoltaic Energy Conversion Using Thermally-Based Spectral Shaping," Nature Energy, 1(5), 2016.
- Kim, H., Rao, S.R., Narayanan, S., Kapustin, E.A., Yang, S., Furukawa, H., Umans, A.S., Yaghi, O.M., and E.N. Wang, "Response to Comment on “Water Harvesting from Air with Metal-organic Frameworks Powered by Natural Sunlight”," Science, 358(6367), 2017.
- Lu, Z., Wilke, K. L.. Preston, D. J., Kinefuchi, I., Chang-Davidson, E., and E. N. Wang "An Ultrathin Nanoporous Membrane Evaporator" Nano Letters, 17(10), p. 6217-6220, 2017.
- Kim, H., Rao, S.R., Kapustin, E.A., Zhao, L., Yang, S., Yaghi, O.M., and E.N. Wang, "Adsorption-based Atmospheric Water Harvesting Device for Arid Climates," Nature Communications, 9, 2018.
- Wang, Evelyn, "Carbon-nanotube electrodes: Tailoring designs for energy storage, desalination," MITEI, 2017.
Patents
- (Select Patents)
- Patent #6,942,018 “Electroosmotic Microchannel Cooling System,” K.E. Goodson, D.E. Huber, L. Jiang, T.W. Kenny, J-M Koo, J.C. Mikkelsen, J.G. Santiago, E.N. Wang, S. Zheng, L. Zhang, D. Laser, and C.-H. Chen, September 13, 2005.
- Patent #8,678,075 “Heat Exchangers and Related Methods,” E.N. Wang, J.G. Brisson, J.H. Lang, S.A. Jacobson, and M. McCarthy, March 25, 2014.