Dr. Krishna Kota

Professional Preparation

Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Georgia Institute of Technology, Advisor: Dr. Yogendra Joshi

Doctor of Philosophy (Mechanical Engineering), University of Central Florida, Advisors: Dr. Louis Chow and Dr. Jay Kapat

Master of Science (Mechanical Engineering), University of Central Florida, Advisors: Dr. Louis Chow and Dr. Jay Kapat

Bachelor of Technology (Mechanical Engineering), Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University, 1^st Rank with Distinction (out of ~2500 mechanical engineering students in the graduating class), University Gold Medal

Professional Experience

Associate Professor, New Mexico State University, 2018 onward

Assistant Professor, New Mexico State University, 2012-2018

Researcher (Enabling Physical Technologies Research Division), Bell Labs, 2010-2012

Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Georgia Institute of Technology, 2008-2010

Graduate Research Assistant, University of Central Florida, 2002-2008

Graduate Teaching Assistant, University of Central Florida, 2004-2007

Research Statement

Thermal Research Into Vital Environments Laboratory (THRIVE Lab) combines experiments, theory, and advanced manufacturing to investigate the transport mechanisms that govern the performance, resilience, and evolution of engineered and natural systems. Research focus spans thermal sciences, interfacial physics, and complex systems, with applications ranging from energy technologies and thermal management to biological systems and public health.

Research Interests

Transport phenomena and interfacial physics

• Surface and interfacial engineering
• Wetting, boiling, and multiphase transport
• Momentum, heat, mass, and particle transport

Functional materials and thermal systems

• Functional surfaces and interfaces
• Heat exchangers
• Thermal management
• Space thermal systems
• Energy storage

Thermodynamics of complex systems

• Physics of life
• Complex adaptive systems
• Computational neuroscience and computational psychiatry
• Public health and infection dynamics

Media Coverage of Research

THRIVE Lab's research has received media coverage in 95+ national and international news outlets such as CNN, BBC, Daily Mail UK, New York Times, Science Daily, US News & World Report, AFRL News, Electronics Cooling Magazine, News-Medical, ABC News, KRWG TV, Yahoo, MSN, etc.

Research Funding

Total research funding as PI/Co-PI: $10.7 million (95% external/federal share), PI share is ~$2.8 million

List of external/federal funding agencies (alphabetic): AFOSR, AFRL, DOE, MDA, NASA, NNSA, NSF, USBR, Sandia; and industry

Research Highlights

• Developed a wet etching process that produces surfaces on which liquid wetting and spreading are largely independent of surface tension, thereby demonstrating what we call as the "true paper towel effect." These ultra-omniphilic surfaces exhibit extreme wetting and liquid-retention capability.

• Experimentally demonstrated heat transfer coefficient increase and pressure drop decrease for the flow of water through a minichannel.
• Developed a Nu–f analogy for internal forced convection with boundary slip, which shows that velocity slip leads to an inverse proportionality between Nusselt number and friction factor. This relationship is contrary to the classical direct proportionality.

Boiling Heat Transfer

• Developed a new class of surfaces called Binary Surfaces (BiS) that use interfacial engineering for enhancing boiling heat transfer performance.
• Achieved a CHF of 35.1 W/cm² together with a 7.5-fold HTC enhancement over a plain surface during pool boiling of PF-5060, which is among the highest combined performance levels reported for this fluid.
• Achieved a CHF of 233 W/cm² together with an HTC of 131,000 W/m²·K during pool boiling of water on Al 6061. This result represents one of the highest reported CHF–HTC combinations for this system.
• Achieved simultaneous enhancement of CHF and HTC, hence overcoming the trade-off commonly encountered in boiling heat transfer.

• Demonstrated the boundary layer thinning phenomenon in wavy channels for achieving heat transfer enhancement without turbulence penalties or excessive pressure drop increases.
• Demonstrated shear-induced particle migration over a channel length of only 6 cm, which is less than 10% of the theoretical and experimentally reported migration lengths for comparable dilute suspensions at low Reynolds numbers.
• Demonstrated the feasibility of metal additive manufacturing of compact, high-effective wavy channel-based heat recuperators for space cryocoolers.

Public Health

• Research on facemask effectiveness reached a peak Altmetric score of 952, placing it among the Top 100 research papers worldwide across all disciplines in 2021. (For comparison, Altmetric reports an average score of approximately 91 for Nature articles.)
• Cited by the OSHA Policy Document on COVID-19.
• Provided the first quantitative result on the effectiveness of combined intervention (facemasks + air ionization) for aerosol reduction in indoor environments.

Patents

• Binary Surface Technology, Inventor: Krishna Kota (application filed in 2025).
• Anti-corrosive Liquid-infused Surfaces, Inventor: Krishna Kota (application filed in 2025).
• An Approach for Altering Wetting Properties of Metallic Surfaces, Inventor: Krishna Kota, US 10,907,258.
• Cooling Technique, Co-Inventor: Krishna Kota, US 9,557,118.
• A Mechanically-Reattachable Liquid-cooled Cooling Apparatus, Co-Inventor: Krishna Kota, US 8,542,489.
• Cooling Apparatus for Communications Platforms, Co-Inventor: Krishna Kota, US 20120279683 A1.
• Miniature High Speed Compressor Having Embedded Permanent Magnet Motor, Co-Inventor: Krishna Kota, US 7,942,646 B2.

Publications

3 invited book chapters, 3 published technical reports, 11 conference and poster presentations, and 65 peer-reviewed journal and conference publications.

Student Supervision

(including past and current students)

1 postdoctoral fellow, 3 Ph.D. students, 11 M.S. thesis students, and 42 undergraduate research students (all funded through research grants). THRIVE Lab's alumni are employed by national labs and industry; some went on to pursue advanced degrees.