Members of the STSL
Dr. Srinivas Garimella is a Professor in the Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He is director of the Sustainable Thermal Systems Laboratory, which he founded upon his arrival at Georgia Tech in 2003. The goal of the research conducted at this laboratory is to develop practical solutions to the global climate change issue in the form of novel systems and components for improved thermal energy utilization. This research is driven by the core belief that the current defining issue facing humankind, sustainable energy, can be addressed not simply through the eternal quest for new sources of fossil and renewable energy, but also through better stewardship of thermal energy utilization and the organization of end-use applications in “near-lossless” energy cascades. Examples of specific applications being addressed include residential and commercial space-conditioning, automotive propulsion and climate control, chemical process industries, and other energy-intensive applications. Specific research in the lab ranges from the fundamental investigations of phase-change heat and mass transfer and supercritical fluid flow and heat transfer phenomena in single- and multi-component fluids at the micro- and mini-scales to the development of novel thermally activated absorption and vapor compression heat pumps, natural refrigerant space-conditioning systems with integrated water heating, thermal management systems for high density Lithium-Ion batteries in vehicular applications, fuel cell moisture management, waste heat recovery for high flux, low temperature cooling in naval and refrigerated transport applications, and miniaturized wearable and portable cooling systems. Integrated experimental, analytical, and computational approaches have led to the direct implementation of insights from the fundamental investigations of heat and mass transfer into practical thermal systems and components with lower energy utilization and environmental impact.
Dr. Garimella received a Ph.D. degree (1990) and an M. S. degree in Nuclear Engineering from The Ohio State University. He received a Bachelors degree in Mechanical Engineering from The Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur (India) in 1982. He was a Research Scientist at Battelle Memorial Institute in Columbus, OH from 1984-1990, and a Senior Engineer in the Delphi Harrison Thermal Systems Division of General Motors Corporation in Lockport, NY from 1990-1993. After serving as a Research Specialist in the Mechanical Engineering Department at The Ohio State University from 1993-1994, he joined Western Michigan University, where he served on the faculty of the Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineering Department from 1994-1998. Dr. Garimella was an associate professor of mechanical engineering and director of the Advanced Thermal Systems Laboratory at the Iowa State University prior to joining Georgia Tech.
Dr. Garimella's research has resulted in over 100 archival journal and refereed conference publications, in addition to five patents on heat pump systems and components. He has held prior positions as Research Scientist at Battelle Memorial Institute, Senior Engineer at General Motors Corp., and Associate Professor at Western Michigan University and Iowa State University. He is a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, Associate Editor of the ASME Journal of Heat Transfer, past Associate Editor of the ASME Journal of Energy Resources Technology, and Past Chair of the Advanced Energy Systems Division of ASME. He was also an Associate Editor of the International Journal of Heating, Ventilating, Air-Conditioning and Refrigerating Research. He was Chair of the ASHRAE Technical Committee on Absorption and Heat Operated Machines, and is a corresponding member of the ASHRAE Technical Committee on Heat Transfer and Fluid Flow. He held the William and Virginia Binger Associate Professorship of Mechanical Engineering at ISU from 1999-2001. He received the ASME-AIChE Best Paper Award for the 2000 National Heat Transfer Conference, the Best Paper Awards (2001 and 2007) and the Best Student Paper Award (2004, with student J. D. Killion) for his papers presented in the Heat Pump Sessions at the ASME IMECE. He is the recipient of the NSF CAREER Award (1999), the ASHRAE New Investigator Award (1998), the SAE Ralph E. Teetor Educational Award for Engineering Educators (1998), and was the Iowa State University Miller Faculty Fellow (1999-2000), and Woodruff Faculty Fellow (2003-2008) at Georgia Tech. In 2008, he received the Thomas French Distinguished Educator Achievement Award (2008) from The Ohio State University.