Rate My Professor Asegun Henry

Asegun Henry is the George N. Hatsopoulos Professor in Thermodynamics and Area Head for Energy Science and Engineering in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at MIT - Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He started as an Associate Professor at MIT in 2018, where he directs the Atomistic Simulation & Energy (ASE) Research Group. Prior to MIT, Henry served as an Assistant Professor in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology from 2012 to 2018. Earlier positions include ARPA-E Fellow at the U.S. Department of Energy from 2011 to 2012, Postdoctoral Researcher at Northwestern University from 2010 to 2011, and Postdoctoral Research Associate at Oak Ridge National Laboratory from 2009 to 2010. He holds a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Florida A&M University, summa cum laude, an M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from MIT, and a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from MIT, with his doctoral thesis on the 1D-to-3D transition of phonon heat conduction in polyethylene chains.

Henry's research in Engineering centers on heat transfer, emphasizing atomic-level understanding of energy transport, storage, and conversion to develop industrial-scale technologies mitigating climate change. His contributions span phonon transport in ordered and disordered materials and at interfaces, solar fuels, thermochemistry, high-temperature concentrated solar power using liquid metals or molten salts, methane pyrolysis for hydrogen production, and thermal energy grid storage concepts like TEGS-MPV and Sun in a Box. He led the development of the world's highest-temperature pump using an all-ceramic mechanical design to circulate liquid metal above 1400°C, recognized in the Guinness Book of World Records, enabling CO2-free hydrogen production and cost-effective grid storage. Key publications include High Thermal Conductivity of Single Polyethylene Chains Using Molecular Dynamics Simulations (Physical Review Letters, 2008), Thermophotovoltaic efficiency of 40% (Nature, 2022), and Spectral Phonon Transport Properties of Silicon Based on Molecular Dynamics Simulations and Lattice Dynamics (Journal of Computational and Theoretical Nanoscience, 2008). His work has garnered over 8,000 citations. Major awards include the Alan T. Waterman Award from the National Science Foundation (2023), ASME Bergles-Rohsenow Young Investigator Award in Heat Transfer (2018), Bell Labs Prize (2021), NSF CAREER Award (2016), and World Technology Award in Energy (2018).