TU Dublin and Trinity College Dublin Secure Funding for Next-Generation Electronics Cooling Research
TU Dublin and Trinity College Dublin have jointly secured funding to advance next generation cooling technologies for compact electronics, marking a significant step forward in thermal management research. The funding, formally approved by the Industry Advisory Board of Purdue University’s prestigious Cooling Technologies Research Center (CTRC) will support a new collaborative project focused on pioneering silent, efficient air-based cooling solutions.
The research team includes Dr Sajad Alimohammadi from the School of Mechanical Engineering at TU Dublin and Associate Professor Tim Persoons of the Department of Mechanical, Manufacturing & Biomedical Engineering at Trinity College Dublin. Together, they aim to address one of the most pressing engineering challenges of modern electronics: how to dissipate heat effectively as devices become smaller and more powerful.
Dr Sajad Alimohammadi highlighted the growing urgency of the challenge:
As electronic systems shrink across wearables, IoT devices, edge computing platforms and high-performance consumer technologies, the heat they generate becomes increasingly difficult to manage. Conventional cooling methods such as mechanical fans can introduce noise, reliability concerns or size constraints, while passive cooling is often insufficient for today’s rising thermal demands. The project will explore innovative air-cooling strategies designed to operate efficiently within tight spatial constraints, without contributing to noise pollution or excessive power consumption.
Associate Professor Tim Persoons highlighted the growing urgency of the challenge:
The newly funded initiative strengthens a long-standing collaboration between TU Dublin, Trinity College Dublin and the CTRC. Previous partnerships have produced impactful results in thermal management, informing both academic research and industry innovation. We look forward to building on that foundation with new insights that support the design of next-generation compact electronics.
The CTRC Director welcomed the collaboration, noting:
CTRC is pleased to engage with TU Dublin and Trinity College Dublin in research that advances the global state of the art in electronics cooling. As devices continue to miniaturise and computational demands increase, innovative thermal management solutions are essential to ensuring performance, reliability and sustainability across a wide range of industries.
As industries race toward more compact, intelligent and highly connected systems, breakthroughs in cooling technology will directly influence competitiveness, sustainability and device reliability. From consumer electronics and wearables to edge computing, data centres, medical devices and emerging 6G and AI-enabled technologies, advanced thermal management is becoming increasingly central to product design and long-term performance.
This project is expected to deliver practical design guidelines, fundamental insights and new engineering approaches that will contribute to quieter, more energy-efficient and more reliable cooling solutions for the next generation of compact electronics.