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About InnoTherm

Sustainability challenges such as climate change, food, water and environmental issues call for researchers in different disciplines around the globe to take action and work collaboratively. Over 90% of our energy consumption and utilization involves heat, and thus heat will play an indispensable role is solving global challenges such as climate change. Thermal energy is everywhere, from electricity generation to maintaining human comfort, from materials processing to food preparation, from computer chip cooling to battery operation safety.

The International Colloquia on Thermal Innovations (InnoTherm) series aims to stimulate and highlight innovations and advances in theory, materials, devices, and systems for efficient thermal energy conversion, storage, transport and utilization. The colloquia include seminars and panel discussions, with speakers from around the world and across different disciplines. The colloquia are delivered online and interactive with audience.

Sponsored by MIT Department of Mechanical Engineering
Organizers: Gang Chen (Chair), Asegun Henry (co-chair)
John Lienhard, and Evelyn Wang

Upcoming InnoTherm Colloquia

  • TBA

Past Colloquia

  • Colloquium No. 26: Fusion Reactor First Wall Cooling
    Dennis Whyte, Director, Plasma Science and Fusion Center; Hitachi America Professor of Engineering, MIT
    John Lienhard (Moderator), MIT
    Wednesday, May 26, 2021
    Youtube link
    Questions from Zoom Q&A
  • Colloquium No. 25: Materials Alchemy: Shape-Preserving Chemical Transformations for Generating 3-D Structures for Thermal, Chemical, and Optical Applications
    Kenneth Sandhage, Reilly Professor of Materials Engineering, Purdue University
    Ase Henry (Moderator), MIT
    Wednesday, May 12, 2021
    Youtube link
    Questions from Zoom Q&A
  • Colloquium No. 24: Opportunities in Nanoengineered Surface Designs
    Doris Vollmer, Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research, Germany
    Dimos Poulikakos, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich, Switzerland
    Nenad Miljkovic, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
    Yas Takata, Kyushu University, Japan
    Dan Preston (Moderator), Rice University
    Wednesday, April 28, 2021
    Youtube link
    Questions from Zoom Q&A
  • Colloquium No. 23: Dynamic and Tunable Thermal Storage and Transport
    Ravi Prasher, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, & Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
    Ase Henry, (Moderator), MIT
    Wednesday, April 14, 2021
    Youtube link
    Questions from Zoom Q&A
  • Colloquium No. 22: Aligning Policy to Decarbonize Thermal Energy Systems in Industry
    Colin Cunliff, Senior Policy Analyst, Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF)
    Blaine Collison, Executive Director, Renewable Thermal Collaborative. Senior Vice President, David Gardiner and Associates
    Zhiyuan Fan, Research Associate, Columbia University Center on Global Energy Policy
    Addison K Stark, (Moderator), Associate Director of Energy Innovation, Bipartisan Policy Center
    Wednesday, March 31, 2021
    Youtube link
    Questions from Zoom Q&A
  • Colloquium No. 21: Advances in Additive Manufacturing for Heat Transfer Applications
    Bill King, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
    Jae Sung Son, Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology, South Korea
    Ole Sigmund, Technical University of Denmark, Denmark
    Saniya LeBlanc (Moderator), The George Washington University
    Wednesday, March 17, 2021
    Youtube link
    Questions from Zoom Q&A
  • Colloquium No. 20: Sorption technologies for space-conditioning, thermal storage and carbon capture
    Srinivas Garimella, Georgia Tech
    Ase Henry (Moderator), MIT
    Wednesday, March 3, 2021
    Youtube link
    Questions from Zoom Q&A
  • Colloquium No. 19: Alternative Refrigerants
    Pega Hrnjak, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
    Dr. Bob Low (Bio), Koura Global, UK
    Stefan Elbel (Moderator), University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
    Wednesday, February 17, 2021
    Youtube link
    Questions from Zoom Q&A
  • Colloquium No. 18: The Impact and Future of Thermal Metrology
    David Cahill, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
    Samuel Graham, Georgia Tech
    Li Shi, The University of Texas at Austin
    Hsin Wang, Oak Ridge National Laboratory
    Amy Marconnet (Moderator), Purdue University
    Wednesday, February 3, 2021
    Youtube link
    Questions from Zoom Q&A
  • Colloquium No. 17: High temperature direct energy conversion: thermophotovoltaic and thermionic technologies
    Andrej Lenert, University of Michigan
    Jared Schwede (Bio), Spark thermionics Inc.
    Alejandro Datas (Bio), Polytechnic University of Madrid, Spain
    Gang Chen (Moderator), MIT
    Tuesday, December 8, 2020
    Youtube link
    Questions from Zoom Q&A
  • Colloquium No. 16: Thermal Desalination by Membrane Distillation
    David Warsinger, Purdue University
    Shihong Lin, Vanderbilt University
    Qilin Li, Rice University
    Guillermo Zaragoza (Bio), Solar Desalination Unit, Almeria Solar Platform
    John Lienhard (Moderator), MIT
    Tuesday, November 10, 2020
    Youtube link
    Questions from Zoom Q&A
  • Colloquium No. 15: Dry is the new cool: advanced dehumidification research for high performance cooling
    Reinhard Radermacher, University of Maryland
    Forrest Meggers, Princeton University
    Eric Kozubal, NREL
    David Claridge, Texas A&M
    Les Norford (Moderator), MIT​
    Tuesday October 27, 2020
    Youtube link
    Questions from Zoom Q&A
  • Colloquium No. 14: The Future of Concentrating Solar Power (CSP)
    Fred Morse (Bio), President, Morse Associate, Inc., former Senior Advisor at Abengoa Solar
    Avi Shultz, Program Manager, DoE CSP
    Mark Mehos, National Renewable Energy Laboratory
    Clifford Ho, Sandia National Laboratories
    Julián Blanco (Bio), Director, CIEMAT-Plataforma Solar de Almería, Spain
    Zhifeng Wang, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences
    Ase Henry (Moderator), MIT
    Tuesday October 13, 2020
    Youtube link
    Questions from Zoom Q&A
  • Colloquium No. 13: Thermal Materials for Building Walls and Windows
    Jan Kosny, University of Massachusetts, Lowell
    Elise Strobach (Bio), Co-founder and CEO of Aeroshield Inc., US
    Long Yi, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
    Leon Glicksman (Moderator), MIT
    Tuesday September 29, 2020
    Youtube link
    Questions from Zoom Q&A
  • Colloquium No. 12: Personal Thermal Comfort
    Renkun Chen, University of California, San Diego
    Yi Cui, Stanford University
    Jintu Fan, Hong Kong Polytechnic University
    Svetlana Boriskina (Moderator), MIT
    Tuesday September 15, 2020
    Youtube link
    Questions from Zoom Q&A
  • Colloquium No. 11: Earth's Energy Balance
    Daniel Murphy, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
    Graeme Stephens, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
    Veerabhadran Ramanathan, University of California, San Diego
    Kyle Armour, University of Washington
    John Marshall (Moderator), MIT
    Wednesday September 2, 2020
    Youtube link
    Questions from Zoom Q&A
  • Colloquium No. 10: Thermal Management of Electric Vehicles: New Engineering Challenges
    Cristina Amon, University of Toronto, Canada
    Jürgen Köhler, University of Braunschweig, Germany
    Stefan Elbel, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
    Jürgen Wertenbach (Bio), retired, Senior Engineer Emeritus, Daimler, Germany
    Aydin Nabovati (Bio) (Moderator), Tesla
    Wednesday August 19, 2020
    Youtube link
    Questions from Zoom Q&A
  • Colloquium No. 9: Significant Role of Hydrogen toward Sustainable Development Goals
    Ken Okazaki, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan
    Arun Majumdar, Stanford University
    Yasuyuki Takata, Kyushu University, Japan
    Junichiro Shiomi (Moderator), University of Tokyo, Japan
    Wednesday August 5, 2020
    Youtube link
    Questions from Zoom Q&A
  • Colloquium No. 8: High Thermal Conductivity Materials
    David Broido, Boston College
    Bara Cola, Georgia Tech
    Yongjie Hu, UCLA
    Sara Rona (Bio), Sabic Inc., Netherlands
    Zhiting Tian, (Moderator), Cornell University
    Wednesday July 22, 2020
    Youtube link
    Questions from Zoom Q&A
  • Colloquium No. 7: Extracting Water from Air
    Jean Humphrey, Johns Hopkins
    Guihua Yu, The University of Texas at Austin
    Peng Wang, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Saudi Arabia, and The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong
    Ruzhu Wang, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China
    Tiejun Zhang, (Moderator), Khalifa University, UAE
    Wednesday July 8, 2020
    Youtube link
    Questions from Zoom Q&A
  • Colloquium No. 6: Battery Thermal Management and Safety
    Yi Cui , Stanford University
    Eric Darcy, NASA
    Ahmad Pesaran, NREL
    Chao-Yang Wang, Pennsylvania State University
    Cristina Amon, (Moderator), University of Toronto
    Wednesday June 17, 2020
    Youtube link
    Questions from Zoom Q&A
  • Colloquium No. 5: Getting the Heat Out – Electronics Cooling from Smartphones to Data Centers
    Ken Goodson, Stanford University
    Dereje Agonafer (Moderator), University of Texas at Arlington
    Wednesday June 3, 2020
    Youtube link
    Questions from Zoom Q&A
  • Colloquium No. 4: HVAC Systems: Centralized or Decentralized
    Yi Jiang, Tsinghua University, China
    Ravi Prasher, LBL Associate Director
    Alexis Abramson, Dean, School of Engineering at Dartmouth College
    Satish Kumar, President and Executive Director, Alliance for an Energy Efficient Economy, India
    Yangying Zhu (Moderator), UC Santa Barbara
    Wednesday May 20, 2020
    Youtube link
    Questions from Zoom Q&A
  • Colloquium No. 3: The Brayton Battery
    Robert B. Laughlin, Nobel laureate, Stanford University
    Alejandro Datas (Bio), Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain
    Asegun Henry, MIT
    Andrew Ponec (Bio), Antora Energy
    Mahesh Mahesh Venkataraman (Bio), 1414 Degrees, Australia
    Craig Turchi (Moderator), NREL
    Wednesday May 13, 2020
    Youtube Link
    Questions from Zoom Q&A
  • Colloquium No. 2: Using the Cold Universe as a Sustainable Energy Resource
    Ronggui Yang (Bio), Professor in the School of Energy and Power Engineering at Huazhong University of Science and Technology
    David Sailor, Arizona State University
    Yuan Yang, Columbia University
    Junichiro Shiomi (Moderator), University of Tokyo
    Wednesday May 6, 2020
    Youtube Link
    Questions from Zoom Q&A
  • Colloquium No. 1: Five Grand Challenges in Thermal Science and Engineering for Deep Decarbonization
    Arun Majumdar, Jay Precourt Provostial Chair Professor at Stanford University (Bio)
    Ravi Prasher, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
    Asegun Henry, MIT
    Chris Dames (Moderator), UC Berkeley
    Wednesday April 29, 2020
    Youtube Link
    Questions from Zoom Q&A
    Presentation slides

Contact Us

For questions, suggestions of speakers and topics, please email innotherm-adm@mit.edu