Abdul Latif Jameel Professor of Water and Mechanical Engineering
Research on the surface tension of seawater by Professor John Lienhard and Kishor Nayar SM ’14, PhD ’19 has been recognized as a guideline by the International Association for the Properties of Water and Steam.
A new study by Professor John Lienhard shows that textbook formulas for describing heat flow characteristics, which are crucial in many industries, are oversimplified.
MIT engineers have developed a new nanofiltration process to curb hazardous waste generated from aluminum production.
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, LOS ANGELES, Dept. Chemical, Nuclear, and Thermal Engineering
BS in Thermal EngineeringUNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, LOS ANGELES, Dept. Chemical, Nuclear, and Thermal Engineering
MS, Heat and Mass TransferUNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO, Dept. Applied Mechanics and Engineering Sciences
PhD, Fluid DynamicsThe activities of our research group are in the broad area of heat and mass transfer, thermodynamics, and fluid dynamics. Our focus is on technologies for desalination of seawater and brackish water, recycling of water, and treatment of and resource recovery from waste waters, with increased energy efficiency and reduced environmental impact as core objectives. This work includes thermodynamic cycle analysis, transport processes in components, solar-energy driven systems, and both thermal and membrane separations.
Past activities in our lab have included: convection and fluid dynamics in liquid jet impingement; high heat flux engineering; thermally stratified turbulent flow and instrumentation; electronics thermal management; and thermally driven instabilities.
John H. Lienhard V is Abdul Latif Jameel Professor of Water and Mechanical Engineering at MIT. During more than three decades on the MIT faculty, Lienhard’s research and educational efforts have focused on water purification and desalination, heat and mass transfer, and thermodynamics. He has also filled a number of administrative roles at MIT.
Lienhard received his bachelor's degree (summa cum laude) and master's degree in thermal engineering at UCLA from the Chemical, Nuclear, and Thermal Engineering Department, where he worked on thermal instabilities in solar collectors and evaporating meniscus measurements for desalination systems. He joined MIT immediately after completing his PhD in the Applied Mechanics and Engineering Science Department at UC San Diego, where he did wind tunnel measurements of spectra and cospectra in thermally stratified turbulent flow.
Since coming to MIT, Lienhard has worked on desalination processes, liquid jet impingement, high heat flux engineering, electronics thermal management, and other topics. His research in desalination includes humidification-dehumidification desalination, membrane distillation desalination, forward and reverse osmosis, fouling and scale formation, electrodialysis, nanofiltration, management of high salinity brines, solar-driven desalination, thermodynamic and energy efficiency analysis of desalination cycles, and energy-water nexus issues. Lienhard has directly supervised more than 90 PhD and masters theses. He is the author of more than 300 peer-reviewed papers and has been issued more than 40 US patents.
Lienhard is a recipient of the 1988 National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator Award, the 1992 SAE Teetor Award, the 2012 ASME Technical Communities Globalization Medal, the 2015 ASME Heat Transfer Memorial Award, the 2019 ASME Edward F. Obert Award (in thermodynamics), the 2022 AIChE Donald Q. Kern Award (for expertise in heat transfer, transport phenomena, and energy conversion), and the 2024 Lifetime Achievement Award of the International Desalination and Reuse Association. He is a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the American Society of Thermal and Fluid Engineers.
Lienhard is the co-author of textbooks on heat transfer, on thermal modeling, and on measurement and instrumentation. His heat transfer book has been available online at no charge since 2002, and hundreds of thousands of copies have been downloaded worldwide. This book was among the very first engineering textbooks distributed in pdf format. His measurements book has sold more than 130,000 copies. He created new graduate courses on desalination, on thermal modeling, and on compressible fluid mechanics. He has also received several teaching and mentoring awards at MIT.
Lienhard has been the Director of the Rohsenow Kendall Heat Transfer Laboratory since 1997. He directed the Center for Clean Water and Clean Energy from 2008 to 2017, and he directed the Ibn Khaldun Fellowship for Saudi Arabian Women from 2009 to 2017.
In 2014, Lienhard founded the Abdul Latif Jameel Water and Food Systems Lab at MIT (J-WAFS), and he directed the lab until 2025. Under his leadership, J-WAFS awarded research grants of more than $25 million at MIT, supporting hundreds of researchers. In addition to scientific research, a dozen new companies were spun-out of J-WAFS.
Lienhard holds Professional Engineering licenses in Massachusetts and Vermont.
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