Collaborative Research: FW-HTF-P: Personalized Wearable Cooling for Workers under Heat Stress

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Approximately 30 million U.S. workers are employed in occupations where the human body is regularly exposed to severe heat stress. Heat stress can result from extreme environmental conditions and from high levels of metabolic activity often involved in these exposed occupations. Heat stress can substantially impair cognitive function, degrade physical performance and endurance, and elevate the risk of injury, illness and death. Although human workers are expected to continue to play major roles in these exposed occupations, technologies to mitigate their heat stress have not received much attention. To address this, the investigators explore the development of novel wearable cooling devices and will obtain preliminary data that will help assess and improve the efficacy, acceptability, and usability of the devices. The research team will engage other stakeholders to examine the socioeconomic impacts of the cooling devices and the potential needs for policy and other interventions to facilitate their widespread and equitable adoption.The proposed work helps validate past discoveries in the field of thermoregulatory physiology: body heat is not lost to the environment equally from all body surfaces. A better understanding of regional differences in heat loss has implications for wearable technologies that can be used to prevent or treat heat stress in a way that is both feasible, effective, and accessible. The ultimate aim is to develop a disruptive technology for wearable cooling that is readily scalable. The proposed work will also help advance fundamental understanding of the materials, thermodynamics, and heat transfer in a flexible cooling device. Programs to broaden participation of undergraduate and graduate students, especially from economically disadvantaged and underrepresented groups, are an integral part of the proposed efforts. The research project should serve as an attractive platform to encourage and excite K-12 students to pursue further education in science and engineering, given its significance in applications that can directly impact human lives, especially those employed in exposed occupations and their families.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.