Prof. B. B. Saha
Kyushu University, Japan
Prof. Bidyut Baran Saha is a Professor and Principal Investigator at the International Institute for Carbon-Neutral Energy Research and a Professor at the Mechanical Engineering Department of Kyushu University, Japan. He received his B.Sc. (Hons.) and M.Sc. degrees from the University of Dhaka and was the 1st Bose Fellow at the same institution. He received his Ph.D. in 1997 from the Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology, Japan. His research interests include thermally powered energy conversion systems (including adsorption cooling, refrigeration, and desalination cycles), thermal energy storage, heat and mass transfer analysis, energy analysis and energy policy. He has published 500 articles in Scopus-indexed journals and international conference proceedings. He has edited eleven books and holds thirty-one patents. His Scopus citations are above 18,000, with an h-index of 73. He is the founding Editor-in-Chief of Evergreen journal, Editor of International Communications in Heat and Mass Transfer (Elsevier), and Associate Editor of Thermal Science and Engineering Progress (Elsevier). He is one of the top peer reviewers (within 1% of Web of Science) in his research fields. He has supervised 40 doctoral students, and several of his graduates are now working as faculty members in various academic institutions or as R&D managers in industries worldwide.
Traditional energy sources, particularly fossil fuels, are being depleted rapidly owing to their extensive use in meeting the increasing energy demands of modern societies. This energy is allocated to essential functions, such as heating, cooling, refrigeration, water purification, and electricity generation. The widespread combustion of fossil fuels depletes finite resources and contributes significantly to greenhouse gas emissions and pollutants that drive global warming. This study examines recent developments and research on adsorbent materials designed for energy conversion and CO2 capture. Various adsorbents, including activated carbon, metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), zeolites, and silica gels, have been investigated for their potential to enhance energy conversion processes, such as adsorption heating/cooling, while addressing CO2 capture and storage challenges. The synthesis steps, adsorption characteristics, and comparison of several novel activated carbons (BACs) derived from different biomass (waste palm trunk, mangrove, and jute sticks) precursors are presented. Experimental findings indicate that BACs/ethanol and BACs/CO2 pairs exhibit remarkably high adsorption characteristics, setting the current benchmark. These novel BACs will significantly contribute to the development of activated carbon-based industries and applications in adsorption heat pumps, CO2 capture and storage, wastewater treatment, and the removal of pollutant gases. Additionally, emerging trends and future prospects for advanced adsorbent materials in energy conversion and CO2 capture are outlined, highlighting their potential to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions and advance sustainable energy technologies.
Prof. Amit Agrawal
IIT Bombay
Prof. Amit Agrawal joined the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay in 2004 after BTech from IIT Kanpur and PhD from the University of Delaware, USA. He is currently an Institute Chair Professor and J.C. Bose National Fellow in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. His research interests are in the Development of novel bio-microdevices, Micro-scale flows, Theoretical fluid mechanics, and Turbulent flows. He has graduated 42 PhD students, 62 Masters, and mentored 13 postdocs on these and related topics. He has published more than 300 journal articles and has a dozen granted patents with his students. Prof. Agrawal’s primary contributions are in the development of a unique blood plasma separation microdevice and derivation of equations that are more general than the Navier-Stokes equations. A technique for processing data in turbulent flows is sometimes referred to as Agrawal Decomposition. His insights and novel results on transmission of COVID-19 are documented as 9 Featured Articles in Physics of Fluids; these articles have been downloaded > 147,000 times and covered by 200+ news outlets in more than 50 countries. He has authored a well-received book entitled Microscale Flow and Heat Transfer: Mathematical Modelling and Flow Physics. The work from his lab has appeared on the cover page of prestigious journals such as Journal of Fluid Mechanics and Physics of Fluids. He serves as Editor-in-Chief of two important Indian journals: Sadhana and Transactions of Indian National Academy of Engineering, and as ex-editor of several international journals. He is an elected Fellow of Indian National Academy of Engineering, National Academy of Sciences India, Indian Academy of Sciences, and Indian National Science Academy. He has been interviewed by All India Radio, Cooling India magazine, and web-series (such as ‘The Saint in a Scientist’). He also features in a book for kids ‘They Made What? They Found What?’. He has been awarded the country’s highest scientific honor – the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for his seminal contributions.
There is evidence in the literature as well as experimental data from our lab suggesting that the Navier-Stokes equations are inadequate to explain several observations with low-pressure gas flows. There seems to be no satisfactory alternative to theoretically describe the flow when the mean free path of the gas is of the order of the characteristic length scale. The two well established approaches of solving the Boltzmann equation yield the Burnett and 13-moments equations, which are higher-order transport equations. However, several shortcomings of these equations are known by now. This motivated us to explore alternate ways to study and derive higher-order transport equations. Furthermore, using a novel iterative approach we could find the first ever analytical solution of the Burnett equations. I will discuss our novel approach of employing distribution function consistent with Onsager’s reciprocity principle to capture non-equilibrium thermodynamics effects, and the new equations derived in our group. I will present the attractive features of these newly derived OBurnett and O13 equations and some solutions of these equations. The talk therefore explains the conditions under which the celebrated Navier-Stokes equations fail, and the way to model the flow under such circumstances.
Prof. M. Ramgopal
IIT Kharagpur
Prof. M. Ramgopal received B.Tech in Mechanical Engineering from NIT Warangal (formerly REC Warangal), M.Tech and Ph.D in Refrigeration and Air Conditioning from IIT Madras. Worked as Manager (R&D) in BPL Refrigeration Ltd., Bangalore before joining IIT Kharagpur as faculty member. Currently holding the post of Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. Served as Professor-in-Charge, Refrigeration & Air conditioning, IIT Kharagpur; Editorial Advisory Board member of Energy & Buildings (Elsevier); Life Member of Institute of Engineers (IE); Life Member of Indian Society for Heat & Mass Transfer (ISHMT); Member (ITC), ISHRAE; Member, Science & Technology Council, International Institute of Refrigeration, Paris, France; Dean (Faculty of Engineering & Architecture), IIT Kharagpur and Vice President, Indian Society for Heat and Mass Transfer (ISHMT). Areas of research include hybrid refrigeration and air conditioning systems, CO2 based cooling and heating systems, solid sorption based energy conversion devices and thermal comfort. Handled several sponsored projects and industrial consultancy works related to air conditioning of academic complexes, indoor stadia, refrigeration systems for plant growth chambers, sorption based refrigeration and air conditioning systems etc. Published over 150 papers in peer reviewed journals and conferences.
Refrigeration systems affect sustainability in a complex manner. While they make the world more sustainable by reducing food wastage, improving living conditions, improving productivity and helping in healthcare. However, refrigeration also affects sustainability adversely through increased emissions of harmful refrigerants and contribution to global warming through increased primary energy consumption. While it is difficult to imagine modern life without refrigeration, its impact on sustainability needs to be considered carefully while promoting refrigeration. What needs to be done in the design, development and operation of refrigeration systems so that they have a positive impact on sustainability will be the topic of the present lecture.
Prof. P. S. Lee
NUS, Singapore
Prof. P. S. Lee is Head and Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the National University of Singapore. Prof PS Lee obtained his BEng (1st Class Honors) and MEng from the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the National University of Singapore. He proceeded to obtain his PhD degree from the School of Mechanical Engineering, Purdue University, West Lafayette, USA in 2007. A thermofluids scholar and research leader, he works at the intersection of heat transfer, energy systems, and sustainable digital infrastructure. His group advances fundamentals and applications of high-performance cooling - spanning single- and two-phase direct-to-chip liquid cooling, microchannel and microgap heat sinks, topology- and additively engineered cold plates, immersion cooling, and energy-efficient air conditioning systems. Beyond device-level innovation, his work integrates second-law/exergy principles into rack, room, and plant design for hot-humid climates, including warm-water operation, indirect evaporative strategies, and waste-heat-regenerated desiccant dehumidification. He is also the recipient of various awards including the 2009 Tan Kah Kee Young Inventors Award, 2011 Asia Pacific Clean Energy Summit Top 10 Defense Energy Technology Solutions Award and the 2011 Institution of Engineers Singapore (IES) Prestigious Engineering Achievement Award. Prof. Lee serves as Executive Director of the Energy Studies Institute (ESI) at NUS, Co-Director of the NUS Sustainable Futures, and Coordinating Director of the NUS Energy Solutions Future (NESH). A Fellow of ASME, he has authored 200+ peer-reviewed publications on heat transfer, data-center thermofluids, and sustainable cooling, with an h-index of 52 and 11,000+ citations. He collaborates widely with industry and public agencies on standards, testbeds, and deployment playbooks for climate-aligned computing.
AI accelerators are driving unprecedented heat fluxes and rack power densities, with tropical sites facing the tightest constraints—high wet-bulb temperatures, persistent humidity, and limited economization. This keynote connects first principles to deployable solutions across the full cooling stack. We begin with the thermofluid foundations that set limits - conduction bottlenecks, single-phase convection (air and liquid), and phase change (forced convective boiling, CHF margins). Building on these, we examine modern airflow management and rear-door heat exchangers; topology- and additively engineered cold plates for single-phase direct-to-chip; two-phase cold plates that suppress flow instabilities and expand CHF headroom; and immersion and microjet/spray options that are not mainstream yet. For hot-humid climates, we discuss warm-water regimes and second-law/exergy considerations, then facility-level strategies - membrane-based indirect evaporative cooling, waste-heat-regenerated desiccant dehumidification, and seawater cooling. Finally, we show how physics-informed digital twins and multi-objective ML control close the operational loop, and we motivate a sustainability scorecard (PUE, WUE, CUE, ERF/ERE) instead of single-metric optimization. The talk highlights laboratory investigations and field testing, and concludes with a co-innovation testbed model to testbed → derisk → scale sustainable cooling solutions under real tropical conditions.
Prof. Sarit Kumar Das
IIT Madras
Professor Sarit K. Das is an Institute Professor at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai. He is the first occupant of the V. Balakrishnan Chair Professorship of the Institute. He is the former Director of the Indian Institute of Technology Ropar and also the former Dean (Academic Research) of IIT Madras. Prof. Das studied at the Jadavpur University (BME 1984,MME 1987), NIT Rourkela (PhD 1994) and the Helmut Schmidt University of Hamburg, Germany(Postdoc). His research group works on various aspects of thermo fluidics like heat and mass transfer in industrial equipment such as heat exchangers and fuel cells, multiphase flow and energy conversion. The group focuses explicitly on Micro-Nano scale processes and is known to be one of the leading groups on Nanofluids in the world. Another area of focus of the group is bio-microfluidics, for medical diagnostics, developing organ on a chip platforms for drug delivery and understanding pathological states related to cardiovascular diseases and cancer. Prof. Das is a Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences (NASI), the Indian National Academy of Engineering (INAE) as well as a fellow of Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and Asian Union of Thermal Sciences and Engineering (AUTSE). He was a Peabody Visiting Professor at MIT, Cambridge and a visiting Professor - Lund University, Sweden. He is conferred with the prestigious India Citation Awards 2012 by Thomson Reuters. He has published more than 370 research articles and six books. He is the most cited mechanical engineer of the country. Prof. Das is a member of the editorial boards of Heat Transfer Engineering, Taylor & Francis Publishers and the former Editor in Chief of the International Journal of Micro-Nano Scale Transport. He received the Lifetime Achievement Award from IIT Madras and Distinguished Alumnus Award of NIT Rourkela.
Revitalizing Nanofluids: Three Decades of Evolution, Challenges, and Breakthroughs in Thermal Management and Beyond: At the beginning of the millennium, Nanofluids came with a huge promise in the arena of thermal management technologies. The relentless miniaturization and increasing power densities of electronic devices pose significant thermal management challenges. Traditional cooling techniques often fall short in effectively dissipating the generated heat, leading to performance degradation and potential system failure. Nanofluids were seen as a significant emerging technological innovation to tackle these challenges. However, some controversies regarding stability and the magnitude of property enhancement put breaks on its progress towards full potential of its usage. Nanofluids which are dilute suspensions of nanoparticles in Newtonian liquids has got very different natures concerning stability and extensive properties. However the above phenomena critically depend on the preparation of the Nanofluid and the lack of standardization in the method of preparation is the root cause of this controversy. Of late Nanofluids have made a strong comeback proving its decisive edge over usual cooling fluids in as diverse fields as cooling of electronics, Battery Thermal Management Systems (BTMS), and even drug delivery and hyperthermia treatments in health care. This lecture traces this development and also demonstrates the application of Nanofluids in a particular case of processing electronic material. It explores a novel approach to address this issue by integrating Nanofluids and innovative geometries for enhanced heat transfer in high heat flux plasma processing. Nanofluids, engineered by dispersing nanoparticles such as hBN in unique Deep Eutectic Solvents (DES) fluids, exhibit superior thermal properties compared to their base fluids (DES). By carefully selecting nanoparticle materials, size, and concentration, significant improvements in thermal conductivity and heat transfer coefficients can be achieved. Furthermore, innovative geometries, such as mini-channel heat sinks with optimized surface features, can further enhance heat dissipation by promoting efficient heat transfer mechanisms. Choosing the right cooling method with environmental consideration is mandatory in the current global warming scenario. Hence, an organic solvents replacing the current harmful engineering fluids is suggested which will reduce the global warming potential (GWP) rating. This lecture will trace the development of Nanofluids over the last three decades indicating the application in which it is making rapid progress with a recent development of cooling strategy for electronic material processing.
Prof. Santosh Ansumali
JNCASR Bangalore
Prof. Santosh Ansumali is a computational physicist and engineer specializing in kinetic theory, lattice Boltzmann methods, computational fluid dynamics, and high-performance computing. With over two decades of experience, he has made significant contributions to mesoscale simulation techniques, advancing fluid flow modeling and large-scale computational algorithms. Ansumali is also the founder and was Chief Technology Advisor of SankhyaSutra Labs Pvt. Ltd., translating academic research into commercial high-performance computing solutions. He is scientific advisor to Pranos fusion, a start-up working in the area of fusion. He has authored over 75 peer-reviewed publications, and is recognized for his innovative approaches to nonlinear systems and heterogeneous computing environments.
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We revisit radial basis function (RBF) networks through the lens of kinetic theory, proposing a novel learning framework that enhances computational efficiency and physical interpretability. In traditional RBF interpolation, a Gaussian function is centered at each data point, with matrix inversion representing a “high-temperature” scenario where long-range interactions dominate. We propose a “low-temperature” alternative, where interactions are localized, transforming the computationally expensive matrix inversion into a more efficient local moment-matching problem. This local approach offers significant computational and memory efficiency advantages over standard RBF interpolators, particularly for large datasets. We apply this framework to function interpolation and derivative computation, enabling the development of a robust method for solving partial differential equations (PDEs). We compare our approach to physics-informed neural networks (PINNs) using standard fluid dynamics benchmarks, demonstrating its effectiveness. Furthermore, we explore how this framework facilitates the integration of conservation laws into machine learning methods, enhancing their physical consistency and interpretability. Our results suggest a promising direction for scalable, physics-grounded AI, with applications in computational science and engineering. Ref: Ganguly, A., Gabbana, A., Rao, V., Succi, S., & Ansumali, S. (2025). A kinetic-based regularization method for data science applications. Machine Learning: Science and Technology.