H. Ezzat Khalifa elected fellow of two prestigious engineering societies

Tricia Hopkins
(315) 443-2546

H. Ezzat Khalifa, NYSTAR Distinguished Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering in Syracuse University’s L.C. Smith College of Engineering and Computer Science (LCS) and founding director of the STAR Center of Environmental Quality Systems at SU, has been elected a fellow of two prestigious engineering societies, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) and the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE).

Election as an ASME fellow is based on an individual’s significant engineering achievements. Khalifa was selected based on his “contributions in such diverse areas as fundamental and applied research, product development, and leadership of cross-disciplinary research and development organizations, which attest to his multi-faceted accomplishments.”

ASHRAE fellows are members who have attained distinction and made substantial contributions in the fields of heating, refrigeration, air conditioning, ventilation or the allied arts and sciences through invention, research, teaching, design or original work, or as an engineering executive on projects of unusual or important scope.

Khalifa’s distinguished work has spanned nearly four decades of experience in both industry and academia. After earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees in mechanical engineering at Cairo University in Egypt, Khalifa joined the faculty there as an instructor and taught for five years. In 1976, he earned a Ph.D. in engineering (thermodynamics and fluid dynamics) at Brown University. He was a research assistant professor there for two years before joining United Technologies Research Center (UTC) in 1978 as a research engineer.

Early in his tenure with UTC, Khalifa was engaged in the research and development of solar cooling systems, geothermal power systems and waste heat recovery systems. He was a key member of a team that developed, built and tested a successful 18-ton solar-powered, vapor-compression cooling system that was installed and operated in Phoenix through a joint U.S. Department of Energy/Saudi Arabian program.

Upon UTC’s acquisition of the Carrier Corp. in 1979, Khalifa turned his focus to HVAC research and initiated UTC’s first research program in indoor air quality. There he began the development of high-performance, direct, high-speed drive centrifugal vapor compressor technology. The technology is the basis for the current line of centrifugal compressors built by Carrier, and his work earned Khalifa a URTC Special Award for Outstanding Contributions to an Operating Unit (Carrier). The collaboration on the technology between UTC and Carrier also earned the prestigious Horner Citation in 1990.

In 1991, Khalifa was appointed director of engineering for the Carrier Carlyle Compressor Division. He led the design center at Carlyle for seven years, during which three new families of compressors were launched. In 1998, he became the director of the Carrier research and development program at URTC. In that capacity, he was responsible for planning and executing a diversified portfolio of advanced research and development programs aimed at HVAC and refrigeration products and services and business processes. This portfolio resulted in the development and deployment of several innovative Carrier and UTC products in indoor air quality, combined cooling and power systems and waste heat utilization systems, as well as the development of advanced design tools.

In 2001, Khalifa retired from UTC and joined SU, where he became the founding director of the newly awarded STAR Center for Environmental Quality Systems (EQS ). The center is a cross-disciplinary enterprise involving SU and nine other academic institutions around the state, with the mission to investigate and develop intelligent environmental quality systems for urban and built environments.

His research at SU focuses on analytical and experimental investigations of heat and mass transfer in environmental control and energy conversion systems. Khalifa has been the principal investigator on sponsored research programs totaling more than $11 million. He has developed innovative personalized ventilation methods and is leading the development of distributed, demand-controlled ventilation and environmental control systems that customize and optimize an individual’s micro-environment while reducing building energy consumption. He has also developed advanced modeling and simulation tools for studying energy, air and contaminant transport indoors and for the design and optimization of UV-photocatalytic air cleaners, energy recovery ventilators and personalized ventilation systems.

Khalifa is currently spearheading SU’s IBM-sponsored research efforts on the development of a green, high-efficiency data center aimed at reducing data center primary energy use by as much as 50 percent.