Dereje Agonafer

Dereje Agonafer is a Presidential Distinguished Professor at The University of Texas at Arlington (UTA), leading the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. He directs two prominent centers: the NSF IUCRC in Energy Efficient Systems and the Electronics, MEMS, and Nanoelectronics Systems Packaging Center. With a career spanning academia and industry, he previously worked at IBM for 15 years, specializing in thermal engineering, and has since become a leading expert in electronic packaging and data center cooling.

Education: PhD in Mechanical Engineering from Howard University (1984), MS from Howard University (1978), and BS in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Colorado Boulder (1972). His research focuses on energy-efficient systems, thermal management in 3D packaging, and reliability engineering. He has graduated 259 students (35 PhDs) and currently advises 15 PhD and 13 MS students.

Notable achievements include the Thermi Award (2008), Heat Transfer Memorial Award (2019), and election to the National Academy of Engineering (2019). He holds over 200 publications and has secured millions in funding for projects like the NSF IUCRC Phase III. His work emphasizes sustainability and industry collaboration, with partnerships from Facebook, Yahoo, and Intel.

Labs/Teams: Directs the UTA Data Center Lab, equipped with donated servers from Yahoo and Facebook, and leads research in immersion cooling, liquid cooling, and reliability testing. His team explores innovative cooling solutions for high-density computing systems, including dynamic thermal management and additive manufacturing-based heat sinks.