Cooling technologies are crucial to maintaining optimal temperatures and ambient humidity within data centres, especially in humid tropical cities like Singapore. Ideally, data centres are kept between 23 to 27°C and 50 to 60% humidity. This ensures the computing infrastructure they house is not damaged from overheating and data is not lost. However, maintaining a suitable environment requires a lot of energy, contributing significantly to carbon emissions.

With a critical role in supporting the digital economy, it is imperative to develop sustainable cooling technologies for data centres in Singapore. To that end, Associate Professor Lee Poh Seng from NUS Mechanical Engineering is developing innovative cooling technologies, such as an additive manufactured unibody heat sink design that features two cooling modes, i.e., air and liquid cooling, in a single integrated piece. This eliminates the need for connectors and ducts. This direct chip hybrid cooling method can serve as an alternative, greener cooling solution that will significantly reduce server downtime due to overheating or inapt humidity issues.

With Assoc Prof Lee’s expertise in high-efficiency/performance thermal management techniques and microscale heat transfer, he has also developed various novel and effective techniques to improve the performance of microchannel heat sinks and mitigate critical issues of hotspots and large temperature gradients in electronic devices. These efforts have resulted in numerous patent applications being awarded.

Assoc Prof Lee currently leads the Energy Studies Institute (ESI), the leading energy policy think tank in Singapore and Southeast Asia. Through research, networking, and facilitating dialogue among stakeholders, including the government, academia, the energy industry and the public, ESI plays a strategic role in shaping the evolving energy narratives and landscapes domestically and externally amid the global low-carbon energy transition development. ESI’s core objective is to contribute to our government’s agenda to enhance Singapore’s economic competitiveness and stay relevant on the international stage while simultaneously ensuring Singapore’s energy security and environmental sustainability commitments.