Carlos Hidrovo, Assistant Professor at The University of Texas at Austin, Receives DARPA Award
April 21, 2008
Dr. Carlos H. Hidrovo, assistant professor of Mechanical Engineering, has received one of the 39 Young Faculty Awards from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). These young faculty members, researchers on the faculty of 27 universities located in 17 different states, are considered rising stars in university microsystems research. Each will receive a grant of approximately $150,000 to be used to further develop and validate their research idea during the coming year. Dr. Hidrovo received this award for his project titled, "High Speed Droplet Flows: Microscale Total Analysis and Thermal Management Systems Applications."
Dr. Hidrovo researches multiscale thermal fluids and surface interactions phenomena for applications in energy and thermal management systems. He is also actively involved in developing novel imaging and diagnostic tools in this area. His most recent work focused on the study of microscale two-phase flows for water management purposes in Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cells (PEMFCs). He is currently interested in using microscale droplet flows in portable lab-on-a-chip applications and using microscopic surface features to reduce water resistance and improve fuel efficiency of sea vessels.
Dr. Hidrovo earned his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2001. Dr. Hidrovo worked as a Research Scientist in the 3D Optical Systems group at MIT and as a Research Associate in the Micro Heat Transfer Laboratory at Stanford University before joining the faculty of The University of Texas at Austin in September 2007. He is also the recipient of the American Society of Mechanical Engineering 2001 Robert T. Knapp Award.
DARPA's Young Faculty Award program, now in its second year, is designed to seek out ideas from non-tenured faculty in order to identify the next generation of researchers working in microsystems technology. The funded researchers will focus on concepts that are innovative, speculative, and high-risk. DARPA expects that the innovations researched under the Young Faculty Award program will assist in identifying new areas of research that are sufficiently important and challenging to warrant additional DARPA programs.