The Nationwide Science Basis (NSF) right this moment named Asegun Henry, an affiliate professor in MIT’s Division of Mechanical Engineering, as a 2023 recipient of its Alan T. Waterman Award. This award is the NSF’s highest honor for early-career researchers and offers funding for analysis in any science or engineering subject.
That is the second yr NSF has chosen to honor three researchers with the award. Henry is the sixth school member from MIT to obtain this honor in its 47-year historical past, and is simply the second mechanical engineer to ever win the award. Along with a medal, Henry and his fellow awardees, Natalie S. King of Georgia State College and William Anderegg from the College of Utah, will every obtain $1 million over 5 years for analysis of their chosen subject of science.
“I’m thrilled to congratulate this yr’s Waterman awardees, three excellent scientists who’re courageously tackling a few of the most difficult societal issues by way of their ingenuity and revolutionary mindset,” says NSF Director Sethuraman Panchanathan. “Their pioneering accomplishments are exactly what the Waterman Award was created to acknowledge, and I look ahead to their super contributions sooner or later.”
NSF acknowledges Henry as a global thermal science and engineering chief. Henry has made breakthrough advances in nanoscale warmth switch and high-temperature vitality methods. He directs the Atomistic Simulation and Power (ASE) Analysis Group at MIT, specializing in warmth switch on the atomic stage. He additionally works on growing applied sciences that may assist mitigate local weather change, addressing many issues from the atomic to the gigawatt scale.
Henry and colleagues have led the event of a number of technological breakthroughs, setting a world report for the highest-temperature pump, utilizing an all-ceramic mechanical pump to maneuver liquid steel above 1,400 levels Celsius, in addition to the world report for thermophotovoltaic effectivity.
“It has been difficult to push the sector in direction of acceptance of recent concepts, and it has been a path fraught with resistance and questioning of the validity of our outcomes,” says Henry. “Receiving this award is vindicating and can influence my profession vastly because it helps validate that the advances we have pioneered actually do register as main contributions, and I satisfaction myself on the influence of my work.”
The Waterman Award shall be introduced to Henry at a ceremony held in Washington on Might 9 through the Nationwide Science Board assembly.