Professor Lee’s research interests encompass the following interconnected areas:

1. Advanced Thermal Management for AI and High-Performance Computing

• Thermal management of AI accelerators, GPUs, CPUs and high-density electronics
• Direct-to-chip liquid cooling
• Single- and two-phase cooling
• Microchannel and minichannel heat transfer
• Flow boiling and two-phase thermal-hydraulics
• Hotspot mitigation and high-heat-flux cooling
• Advanced cold plates and heat sinks
• Additive-manufactured and topology-optimised thermal structures
• Thermal management of co-packaged optics and advanced electronic systems

2. Sustainable and AI-Ready Data Centres

• Sustainable tropical data-centre design and operation
• High-density and liquid-cooled data centres
• AI-factory thermal infrastructure
• Brownfield conversion from air to liquid cooling
• Warm-water cooling and elevated-temperature operation
• Cooling-system architecture and optimisation
• Heat-rejection technologies and water-efficient cooling
• Waste-heat recovery and heat reuse
• Data-centre energy, water and carbon performance
• Resilient and resource-efficient digital infrastructure

3. Integrated Power–Thermal Systems for Computing Infrastructure

• Co-design of electrical power and thermal-management systems
• High-voltage DC and next-generation power architectures for AI data centres
• Power–cooling interactions at chip, rack and facility levels
• Energy storage and low-carbon power integration
• System-level optimisation of compute, power and cooling infrastructure

4. Intelligent Thermal and Energy Systems

• Digital twins for thermal systems and data centres
• Physics-informed modelling and reduced-order models
• AI/ML-assisted thermal management
• Model-predictive control and adaptive cooling
• Computational fluid dynamics and thermal-fluid optimisation
• Real-time monitoring, diagnostics and optimisation of cooling infrastructure

5. Energy-Efficient Cooling and Air Conditioning

• High-efficiency air-conditioning systems
• Hybrid air–liquid cooling
• Tropical cooling and dehumidification
• Passive and low-energy cooling technologies
• High-performance heat exchangers and thermal-energy systems

6. Heat Transfer and Thermal-Fluid Sciences

• Convective heat transfer
• Microscale and macroscale heat transfer
• Single- and two-phase thermal-fluid transport
• Enhanced heat-transfer surfaces
• Multiphase flow and phase-change heat transfer
• Experimental and computational thermal sciences

7. Sustainable Energy and Thermal Systems

• Waste-heat recovery and utilisation
• Thermal-energy storage
• High-efficiency thermal systems
• Renewable and low-carbon energy integration
• Energy-system efficiency and decarbonisation

Across these areas, Professor Lee is particularly interested in research that connects fundamental thermal-fluid science with system-level engineering and large-scale deployment, enabling innovations to progress from laboratory concepts to validated technologies, industry adoption, standards and sustainable infrastructure.