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Saptarshi Joshi

Curriculum vitae

Saptarshi Joshi. Ph.D. candidate, Mechanical Science and Engineering, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. syjoshi2@illinois.edu
Open to internships for summer and fall 2027, and to full-time industry roles from 2028.

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Education

  1. Ph.D., Mechanical Engineering

    University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign · 2023 – 2028 (expected)

    Advisor: Prof. Nenad Miljkovic, Energy Transport Research Laboratory

  2. M.S., Mechanical Engineering

    University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign · 2025

    GPA 4.0/4.0. Thesis on thermal characterization of multilayer insulation at cryogenic temperatures.

  3. B.Tech. (Honors), Mechanical Engineering; Minor in Artificial Intelligence and Data Science

    Indian Institute of Technology Bombay · 2019 – 2023

    GPA 9.53/10

Research

Graduate Research Assistant, Energy Transport Research Laboratory, UIUC · 2023 – present

  1. Manifold microchannel cold plates for high-power electronics and GPU packages

    • Co-first author, IJHMT 2026: Pareto-based design optimization, fabrication and testing of a copper manifold microchannel cooler for a six-device GaN board; 70–98 % lower pressure drop and 19–26 % lower thermal resistance than the baseline, heat flux up to 208 W/cm², simulations within 3 % of experiment.
    • Developing a design framework for large-area manifold microchannel cold plates for GPU packages dissipating 10 kW and more; designing, fabricating and testing GPU-scale cold plates with additive and conventional manufacturing.

  2. Dynamic system modeling of liquid-cooled AI data centers

    • Developed a chip-to-ambient transient model of a direct-to-chip liquid-cooled AI rack and a framework for analyzing transient performance, energy efficiency and operation under realistic workloads and weather.
    • Extending the work to megawatt racks, facility scale and pumped two-phase cooling. First-author manuscript in preparation.

  3. Additively manufactured cold plates for GPUs

    • First author, Advances in Heat Transfer (in press): monolithic GRCop-42 copper cold plate with sinusoidal microchannels; 0.113–0.137 K/W at 100–600 W, geometry within 5 % of design by X-ray CT, 0.150 K/W junction to coolant on an NVIDIA RTX A4000.
    • Designing manifold microchannel, pin-fin and lattice cold plates for additive manufacturing with industry partners including 3D Systems, IQ Evolution, Tritone Technologies and Fabric8Labs.

  4. Li-ion battery thermal management

    • Built, with a team, an experimental setup for two-phase immersion cooling of Li-ion cells and small packs; electro-thermal modeling of internal cooling for large prismatic cells. Co-author, Applied Thermal Engineering 2025.

  5. Multilayer insulation for cryogenic superconducting motors (M.S. thesis)

    • Designed and built a calorimeter-bar apparatus for measuring the conductance of multilayer insulation under vacuum at ambient and cryogenic temperatures, and established the measurement limits of the method through modeling and uncertainty analysis. Co-author, Cryogenics 2025.

Industry

  1. Thermal R&D Intern

    Lennox International, Advanced Technology Division, Dallas, TX · Summer 2024

    • Developed a control logic for dual-fuel systems (heat pump and furnace) in a Python–EnergyPlus co-simulation that optimizes cost and emissions in real time from regional energy data; 25 % lower emissions than conventional dual-fuel control across six locations in the Midwest and Northeast.
    • Compressor testing, and heat exchanger design and simulation for new heat pump products.

Earlier research

  1. Bachelor's thesis

    IIT Bombay, with Prof. Rajendra Vedula · 2022 – 2023

    Heat transfer enhancement in pin-fin channels for turbine blade cooling using rib turbulators; 70 % higher average Nusselt number at constant pumping power.

  2. Research Intern

    Laboratory of Complex Fluids Research, Université Laval, with Prof. Seyed M. Taghavi · Summer 2022

    More than 250 high-speed imaging and PIV experiments on buoyant jets in viscoplastic fluids; machine learning models for jet characteristics.

  3. Research Intern

    University of California, Los Angeles, with Prof. M. Khalid Jawed · 2021

    Data-driven modeling for the discrete elastic rods algorithm.

Publications

  1. Joshi, S., Tyagi, H., Du, X., Jain, A., Park, W. Y., Pinkus, I., Ganesan, V., Miljkovic, N.. Data center thermal analysis using dynamic system modeling. Manuscript in preparation (in preparation).
  2. Joshi, S., Bazmi, B., Park, W. Y., Farhat, D., Shatskiy, E., Zaki, O. M., Green, S., Black, D., King, W. P., Miljkovic, N.. Metal additive manufacturing enables monolithic copper cold plate development with sinusoidal microchannels for direct-to-chip cooling. Advances in Heat Transfer (in press).
  3. Bazmi, B., Joshi, S., Park, W. Y., Aflatounian, S., Lad, A. A., Liu, J., Shatskiy, E., Garimella, V. S., Tang, C., Lin, Y., Asheghi, M., Mantooth, H. A., Goodson, K. E., Miljkovic, N.. High-heat-flux liquid cooling of electronics with manifold microchannels: Thermal-hydraulic optimization and experimental validation. International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 268, 128924 (2026). Co-first author. doi
  4. Qiu, H., Garimella, V. S., Li, C., Joshi, S., Roy, R., Bongarala, M., Apigo, D. J., Parbat, S. N., Faisal, S., Salamon, T., Miljkovic, N.. Immersion-cooled 1U power supply unit for fanless, warm-liquid-cooled data centers. Applied Thermal Engineering 303, 132309 (2026). doi
  5. Aflatounian, S., Luo, K., Sirimanna, S., Gurumukhi, Y., Joshi, S., Parker, D. H., Balachandran, T., Rautela, H., Xiao, J., Haran, K. S., Miljkovic, N.. Design and development of an apparatus for evaluating multi-layer insulation effectiveness. Cryogenics 149, 104080 (2025). doi
  6. Dipto, M. J., Rabbi, K. F., Liu, Z., Gurumukhi, Y., Sederholm, J. G., Joshi, S., Braun, P. V., Wang, P., Miljkovic, N.. Internal flow cooling of cylindrical lithium-ion batteries. Applied Thermal Engineering 281, 128458 (2025). doi
  7. Joshi, S. Y.. Measurement limits and performance analysis of multilayer insulation under vacuum and cryogenic temperatures using a modified calorimeter-bar setup. M.S. thesis, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (2025).
  8. Hassanzadeh, H., Joshi, S., Taghavi, S. M.. Predicting buoyant jet characteristics: a machine learning approach. Chemical Product and Process Modeling (2024). doi
  9. Sachin, S. B., Joshi, S., Murallidharan, J. S., Singh, A., Kumaraswamy, G., Sinha, K.. Enhancing ventilation of enclosed spaces using CFD, Part 3: Ventilation of high-occupancy rooms of IIT Bombay. Resonance (2024). doi
  10. Hassanzadeh, H., Joshi, S., Akbari, S., Taghavi, S. M.. Buoyant miscible jets in a viscoplastic medium with applications in plug and abandonment of oil and gas wells. ASME OMAE 2023 (2023). doi
  11. Jawed, M. K., Lim, S., Joshi, S., Habchi, C.. Resistive force theory vs. slender body theory as hydrodynamic models in simulation of bacterial flagella. APS March Meeting 2022 (2022).

Presentations

  1. High-heat-flux single-phase liquid cooling of gallium nitride power electronics with manifold microchannels: thermal-hydraulic optimization and experimental validation. ASME InterPACK 2026, San Diego, CA. Oral presentation.
  2. Dynamic system modeling of direct-to-chip liquid-cooled AI data centers. Air Conditioning and Refrigeration Center (ACRC) Fall 2026 meeting. Oral presentation and poster.
  3. ACRC meetings, Spring 2025, Fall 2025 and Spring 2026. Posters and presentations.
  4. Power and Energy Conference at Illinois (PECI) 2026.
  5. POETS Annual Meeting, 2024 and 2025.

Leadership

Team Leader, Team Rakshak

Unmanned aerial systems technical team, IIT Bombay · 2020 – 2023

Three years on the team, leading more than 65 students across four subsystems: aircraft design, a CAD model of more than 250 parts, structural and impact analysis, and manufacturing.

Skills

Simulation
ANSYS Fluent and Icepak, COMSOL, OpenFOAM, MATLAB/Simulink and Simscape, EnergyPlus, Flotherm
Design and fabrication
SolidWorks, design for additive manufacturing, machined and printed cold plates
Experimental
Single-phase and two-phase liquid cooling test loops, calorimeter-bar characterization, vacuum and cryogenic testing, battery cycling, infrared thermography, PIV and high-speed imaging, LabVIEW and data acquisition
Programming and data
Python, MATLAB, C/C++, machine learning (scikit-learn, PyTorch), LaTeX