Asegun Henry

Asegun Sekou Famake Henry is the George N. Hatsopoulos Professor in Thermodynamics and Area Head for Energy Science and Engineering in the Department of mechanical engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His research is focused on energy storage, heat transfer, and phonons.

Early life and education Henry was born in Northampton Massacusetts, to Anthony Henry and Oare Dozier-Henry, both former professors at Florida A&M University (FAMU); his father was a middle school teacher and adjunct professor of political science and his mother was a professor of adult education. At a young age, his parents exposed him to West African and African-American culture. At ten years old, he started playing the djembe. Henry also excelled in school and was admitted into a state program for gifted children. Working under Gang Chen, he earned his master's and doctorate degrees in mechanical engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2009. He received research fellowships from the Lemelson Foundation, the Department of Energy, the UNCF, and Ford Foundation.

On January 23, 2017, Henry’s team at Georgia Tech also achieved the highest recorded operating temperature, , for a liquid pump which operated continuously for 72 hours. The achievement was recognized by the Guinness World Records. The pump is made entirely of ceramic materials and was able to pump molten tin heated to very high temperatures.

Henry also conducts research into cost-effective methods to store renewable energy. In a 2018 paper published Energy & Environmental Science, his team described a storage system, TEGS-MPV (thermal energy grid storage using multi-junction photovoltaics) and given the moniker "Sun in a box" in media sources. TEGS-MPV uses molten silicon as a battery to store energy as heat, ready to be delivered into an electrical grid on demand. The system is slated to have capital costs significantly lower than existing electrical energy storage systems.