Asegun Henry started as an associate professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at MIT in 2018, where he directs the Atomistic Simulation & Energy Research Group. Prior to MIT, he was an assistant professor in the Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering at Georgia Tech from 2012 to 2018. He earned a BS in mechanical engineering from Florida A&M University, and an SM and PhD in mechanical engineering from MIT. Henry’s primary research is in heat transfer, with an emphasis on understanding the science of energy transport, storage, and conversion at the atomic level, along with the development of new, industrial-scale energy technologies to mitigate climate change. He has made significant advances and contributions to several fields in energy and heat transfer, namely solar fuels and thermochemistry, phonon transport in disordered materials, and phonon transport at interfaces, and he has developed a pump with the highest heat tolerance on record, which uses an all-ceramic mechanical pump-to-pump liquid metal above 1,400°C. This technological breakthrough, which is now in the Guinness Book of World Records, has opened the door for new high-temperature energy system concepts, such as methane cracking for carbon dioxide free hydrogen production and a new grid-level, energy-storage approach affectionately known as “Sun in a Box” that is cheaper than pumped hydro.

Asegun Henry SM ’06, PhD ’09 is speaking at MIT Better World (Sustainability) on March 16, 2021.