Rawand Rasheed, a fourth-year doctoral student in mechanical engineering (MECH) at Rice, has received a two-year fellowship from Chain Reaction Innovations at Argonne National Laboratory to develop clean energy technologies.
“I will continue working in my start-up company, Helix Earth Technologies, which grew out of my research in the Preston Innovation Laboratory,” said Rasheed, who defended his doctoral thesis on Aug. 25.
The lab’s director is Daniel Preston, assistant professor of MECH. The fellowship will support Rasheed’s salary for two years and provide additional funding for research and development.
“Lowering humidity levels in the air reduces energy loads on air conditioning systems by up to 80 percent, decreasing the cost of operation. We propose a retrofit dehumidification system designed to reduce energy use by more than 50 percent,” said Rasheed, who holds several patents.
His dehumidification system is based on a droplet capture filter called Helix MICRA™, originally developed in collaboration with NASA for use in space. The technology enables high-rate, high-efficiency dehumidification by providing a large area of contact between liquids and gasses.
Last year, Rasheed and Helix Earth Technologies won first place in the H. Albert Napier Rice Launch Challenge, a startup competition sponsored by the Liu Idea Lab for Innovation and Entrepreneurship. Rasheed also won first place in the Texas Entrepreneurship Exchange for Energy startup competition in March and received the 2022 Hershel M. Rich Invention Award from Rice for his research.
In 2021, Rasheed received one of the inaugural IBUILD (Innovation in Buildings) Graduate Fellowships from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Building Technologies Office, which funded his graduate research on the development of the Helix MICRA™ technology.
Rasheed earned his B.S. and M.S. in MECH from Portland State University in 2017 and 2019, respectively. From 2019 to 2022, Rasheed also worked as a life-support systems engineer in NASA’s Crew and Thermal Systems Division at the Johnson Space Center.