In the Andrew lab, my research focuses on achieving cooling and heating thermal control by utilizing different light interactions. In the past year, I helped develop a synthesis process to make reflective coatings that affect cooling. These cooling coatings utilize highly reflective crystal structures to reflect solar light and avoid warming from the sun, while allowing heat from underneath the coating to pass through it and the atmosphere, into space. I then expanded my research to polymer coatings that absorb solar light to produce heat, similar to polar bear pelts and surface features of certain arctic moths and flora. The Andrew lab is collaborating with the Department of Environmental Conservation, and the Department of Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning to create an architectural façade device that utilizes both of these coatings to greatly improve energy efficiency. This façade device can be retrofitted onto existing buildings and will also have a design aesthetic to appeal to a wide variety of people.

My research is important because we believe this façade device will be especially effective for vulnerable populations that may live in buildings where typical insulation methods cannot be used. Many vulnerable people live in homes that may not have the capacity for typical insulation installation or in older buildings which may contain toxic materials, making typical insulation methods impossible, inefficient, and/or expensive. However, our heating and cooling facades would circumvent these issues as they can be easily implemented or removed from the exterior walls of a building, making them accessible for a much wider range of the population. Creating an affordable way to keep families comfortable no matter what their living situation is, would be invaluable and help address systemic inequality in housing.