Nicole Miranda

Engineer Researcher

I got interested in cooling because when looking to get back into research (I was working in industry for 3 years after my DPhil) – it just occurred to me that its a real big blind spot, especially given the risen temperatures caused by climate change. Further, cooling hadn’t evolved much from air conditioning, so there must be a space for innovation. I also am so not good at dealing with heat, one of those people always seeking the shade in any outdoor event.

I grew up in Chile and studied Chemical Engineering there at Universidad de Concepción (in the oldest Chemical Engineering Department of Latin-America). I completed my doctoral degree at Oxford in 2016, looking at a different energy system (bio-energy) at the Department of Engineering.

I currently research the whole of cooling technologies (passive and active), and I look at the environmental impact of pathways to reduce potent refrigerant.  I also have mapped out the future cooling needs if the world doesn’t meet the 1.5°C limit on rise of global mean temperatures, and instead reaches 2.0°C. Our paper in that subject is the top-1 publication from Nature Sustainability (amongst all articles of similar age). It featured in 100s of news outlets, including BBC, Scientific American, The New Scientist – and coming up in the next week or so Time Magazine (US).

I’ve been serving the UK Parliament since last year as a Specialist Advisor, in their Heat Resilience and Sustainable Cooling Inquiry, published earlier at the end of January.