The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded the Center for Energy-Smart Electronics Systems (ES2) with more funding.

ES2 was established in 2011 as a NSF Industry and University Cooperative Research Center through a collaboration with Binghamton University, The University of Texas at Arlington and Villanova University. Andrea Palmeri, managing director for the Center for ES2, said this is the third round of funding the center has received. This round, the Center for ES2 was granted $50,000 by the NSF after submitting a proposal for future projects in December, with plans to use the money on administrative costs.

According to Palmeri, projects run by the Center for ES2 focus on data center efficiency, cooling techniques, predictive management of IT and advancing energy storage technologies. Palmeri emphasized that the goal of the center is to create “self-sensing, self-regulating, energy-optimized data centers and electronic systems.”

“We hope to advance the research into making data centers more energy efficient, given that the industry has been growing substantially over the past several years and consumes about 2 percent of the nation’s energy supply,” Palmeri said. “A large part of our mission is to educate engineers to become employed in the industry and use their skills to work on this challenge. Most of our graduates go on to do just that.”

The Center for ES2 is meant to make data centers more energy efficient, according to the its website. Large data centers that manage things such as the internet and cryptocurrency often consume large amounts of energy, so the Center for ES2 was developed as a collaborative effort — including the government, academia and the industry as a solution to the overconsumption of energy.

In addition to directly providing funding, the NSF’s sponsorship also allows the center to gain funding from industry members, which supports the research and students directly. According to Palmeri, the funding is used to support student stipends, equipment and other supplies.

Ayushman Singh, a fourth-year graduate student pursuing a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering, is working on an ES2 project focused on improving electronic chip cooling thermal performance.

“Since I have been working on this project for almost three years, I have gained theoretical as well as applied knowledge in the field of thermal management/electronic cooling,” Singh wrote in an email. “Also, this project has taught me the importance of sustainable consumption of energy. Apart from this, another good part of being in ES2 is communication with the industry mentors, who help us with the questions related to their use cases/demands, which helps in understanding the application aspect of the research.”

BU’s ES2 laboratory has a mid-range data center that allows experiments to be carried out that would normally be too disruptive at a data center, according to BU’s ES2 website. The center has both hardware and software to carry out a variety of experiments. The laboratory also contains multiple types of cooling technologies in order to carry out multiple experiments on cooling techniques. In addition, there is a separate staging laboratory and thermal laboratory.

Dayananda swamy Kattimani Math, a second-year graduate student pursuing a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering, said he is working on research related to data center cooling because of the increasing demand of processing data, and advanced computing requiring better temperature control. Swamy Kattimani Math expressed that he would enjoy seeing the area of research garner more attention.

“As the current topic is much more relevant to the current issues with the semiconductor shortage and energy crisis, we need to develop ways to improve efficiency and reduce energy consumption,” swamy Kattimani Math said. “With the involvement of companies, funding and mentorship are the two significant things which would improve the quality of research trying to solve the issues currently being faced. I would want these projects to have more interdisciplinary involvement as these involve many different fields of science — like material science, mechanical, computer, electrical and control engineering.”