Aaswath Raman

University of California, Los Angeles

Aaswath Raman invented sub-ambient daytime radiative cooling — a photonic approach to cooling surfaces below ambient air temperature without electricity by engineering materials that emit thermal radiation through the atmospheric transmission window. His 2014 Science paper, demonstrating a nanophotonic multilayer film that cooled below ambient under direct sunlight, generated enormous commercial interest and led him to co-found SkyCool Systems, whose panels are now deployed on supermarket refrigeration systems in California. His UCLA lab currently explores large-area manufacturable radiative cooling films for building envelopes, data-center cooling, and solar-cell efficiency improvement by suppressing thermal losses. Raman is a CIFAR Azrieli Global Scholar and received the Allan Cox Medal from Stanford. His work has influenced ARPA-E's FOCUS and HESTIA programs targeting building energy consumption and has attracted partnership with 3M's Advanced Materials Division for scale-up manufacturing.