Dr Alfonso Ortega

James R. Birle Professor of Energy Technology, Villanova University

Dr. Alfonso Ortega is the James R. Birle Professor of Energy Technology at Villanova University. He is the Director of the Laboratory for Advanced Thermal and Fluid Systems and the Founding Director of the Villanova site of the NSF Center for Energy Smart Electronic Systems (ES2) founded in 2011 and serves as Villanova’s ES2 Site Director.

He received his B.S. from The University of Texas-El Paso, and his M.S. and Ph.D. from Stanford University, all in Mechanical Engineering. He was on the faculty of the Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering at The University of Arizona in Tucson for 18 years. For two years, he served as the Program Director for Thermal Transport and Thermal Processing in the Chemical and Transport Systems Division of The National Science Foundation, where he managed the NSF’s primary program funding heat transfer and thermal technology research in U.S. universities.

Dr. Ortega is a teacher of thermal sciences and experimental methods. He is an internationally recognized expert in the areas of thermal management in electronic systems. He has supervised over 40 M.S. and Ph.D. candidates to degree completion, 5 postdoctoral researchers, and more than 70 undergraduate research students. He is the author of over 300 journal and symposia papers, book chapters, and monographs and is a frequent short course lecturer on thermal management and experimental measurements.

He is a Fellow of the ASME and received the 2003 SEMITHERM Thermie Award and the 2017 ITHERM Achievement Award in recognition of his contributions to the field of electronics thermal measurements.