Above is the NexDCCool Technologies team. From left are Wangda Zuo, professor of architectural engineering; Viswanathan Ganesh, doctoral candidate; Michael Maloney, doctoral student; and Hongjun Li, doctoral student. Photo provided by NexDCCool via Penn State News.
Startup aims to boost efficiency at data centers
Posted on March 17, 2025EDITOR’S NOTE: A version of this story was first published on Penn State News.
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — A Penn State research-based startup, NexDCCool Technologies, launched by Wangda Zuo, professor of architectural engineering in the Penn State College of Engineering and associate director for research at the Global Building Network, and his lab, is creating an AI-powered platform that seeks to optimize the cooling systems in data centers to increase IT capacity by reducing cooling demand.
Zuo, who is affiliated with the Penn State Institute for Computational and Data Sciences (ICDS), explained in an article with Penn State News that the cost of power, the IT load and the amount of cooling needed for data centers is constantly fluctuating. The startup software aims to manage and adjust the cooling based on the customer’s needs, which could be to minimize costs or cooling power or to increase profit. The software would connect the customer’s cooling system and IT infrastructure to do this.
In spring 2024, Viswanathan Ganesh, a doctoral candidate in the Department of Architectural Engineering, alongside Zou, participated in the Invent Penn State U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) I-Corps short course, which led the NexDCCool Technologies team to the NSF I-Corps National Team program in fall 2024. The team also took advantage of resources from the Penn State Small Business Center, the Penn State Dickinson Law Entrepreneur Assistance Clinic and Ben Franklin Technology Partners of Central and Northern PA.
In the course, Zou and Ganesh gathered insights about entrepreneurial basics and engaging with customers, to learning about their market and users’ needs.
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