Research Team Led by Prof. Damena Agonafer Wins Best Paper Award in Data Center Sustainability

A research team at the University of Maryland, led by Professor Damena Agonafer, has been honored with the Best Paper Award in Data Center Sustainability at the Open Compute Project (OCP) Global Summit’s Future Technologies Symposium. The recognition highlights UMD’s leadership in sustainable thermal management solutions for high-performance computing and artificial intelligence data centers.

The award-winning paper and accompanying presentation, titled “Two-Phase Micropillar Evaporators to Enable Cooling of Next-Generation GPU Servers,” showcase a direct-to-chip evaporative cooling technology that uses micropillar arrays to promote thin film boiling and evaporation at the chip surface. Developed in Prof. Agonafer’s lab in collaboration with industry partners, the technology is designed to handle heat fluxes of hundreds of watts per square centimeter, addressing the escalating thermal demands of next-generation GPU servers while improving energy efficiency and sustainability in data centers.

Prof. Agonafer’s team has been advancing two-phase cooling architectures that allow future AI servers to maintain safe GPU case temperatures at high rack-level power, even with higher facility water temperatures and lower pumping power. This work supports a broader mission to enable reliable, energy-efficient electronic systems throughout their life cycles, linking cutting-edge thermal management research with practical data center deployment.

The OCP Global Summit presentation, “Two-Phase Micropillar Evaporators to Enable Cooling of Next-Generation GPU Servers,” is available on YouTube, providing the community with an opportunity to learn about the project and its system-level implications for sustainable data center design.

For more information about the research, contact Prof. Damena Agonafer.

Published February 10, 2026