Dr. Krishna Kota

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; Advisor: Dr. Yogendra Joshi

Graduate Research Assistant, University of Central Florida, 2002-2008; Advisor: Dr. Louis Chow, Co-Advisor: Dr. Jay Kapat

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

Research Interests

Interdisciplinary research at the intersection of thermal sciences, surface & interfacial engineering, and complex systems. Focus on developing functional surfaces & interfaces and thermodynamic frameworks to address challenges in energy systems, public health, and biological processes.

Surface-environment interactions: Engineered surfaces and interfaces for thermal management, pathogen control, corrosion mitigation, water desalination, fluid manipulation

Thermal systems design: Heat exchangers, cooling systems, energy storage, space thermal management, system optimization

Thermodynamics of complex systems: Physics of life, evolution, infection dynamics

Lab: Thermal Research Into Vital Environments Laboratory (THRIVE Lab) located in JH 244

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

THRIVE Lab's Research Highlights

• Developed a novel wet etching process to create surfaces on which wetting and spreading of liquids is independent of their surface tension, i.e., the "true paper towel effect" that is a highly desired result in the field of materials science. These ultra-omniphilic surfaces display an extreme-wetting and liquid retention ability.

• Experimentally demonstrated heat transfer coefficient increase and pressure drop decrease for the flow of water through a minichannel.
• Developed a new Nu-f analogy for internal forced convective flows with wall/boundary slip, which showed that Nusselt number (Nu) becomes inversely proportional to friction factor (f) with velocity slip, which is contrary to their direct proportionality without slip.

Interfacial Engineering in Boiling Heat Transfer

• Developed a new class of surfaces called Binary Surfaces (BiS) that use interfacial engineering for enhancing boiling heat transfer performance.
• One of the highest CHF values measured (35.1 W/cm²) along with a 7.5 times HTC enhancement compared to a plain surface for the pool boiling of PF-5060 on any surface made of any material or any type of surface enhancement until date.
• One of the highest CHF and HTC values measured as a combination (233 W/cm² and 131,000 W/m²-K) for the pool boiling of water on aluminum 6061 alloy.
• Simultaneous CHF and HTC enhancement in both the above cases, which is known as one of the significant challenges in the field of 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.
• Record-breaking passive particle manipulation in the field of microfluidics: achieved shear-induced migration in just 6 cm length which is less than 10% of theoretical and experimentally measured lengths for very 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

• Paper on the effectiveness of facemasks achieved a peak Altmetric score of 952 (Worldwide Top 100 paper across all research fields in 2021). According to Altmetric, “a paper in Nature might have a typical mean Altmetric score of 91.2”).
• 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, 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)