UAF Student Scores High With Insulation Research.
By Yuri Bult-Ito
Photo by Jessica Armstrong
Master’s student, Micah VanderHart, presents his research on vacuum-insulated panels at a regional competition in Denver, Colorado, in March 2025.
University of Alaska Fairbanks engineering student, Micah VanderHart, who is researching highly efficient insulation, placed among the top nine at a recent regional thesis competition.
In February, VanderHart won first place in UAF’s Three Minute Thesis (3MT) competition. In March, he went on to a regional competition in Denver, Colorado.
3MT participants present their theses in three minutes with only one PowerPoint slide.
VanderHart is a master’s student under Tom Marsik at the UAF Alaska Center for Energy and Power. He presented his research related to vacuum-insulated panels, or VIPs. The building insulation is up to 10 times more effective than traditional options.
However, VIP adoption in the building industry has been slow, due to some shortfalls. VanderHart is part of a research team developing an active vacuum insulation system to address those. He is developing a control system for the active vacuum insulation.
His system uses a vacuum pump to remove air from the panels periodically and regularly checks for panel punctures. The automated system can be permanently connected to all the panels in a building. VanderHart’s system also allows panels to be built on site to custom dimensions.
Heating and cooling consume more than half of the household energy used in the U.S. The active vacuum insulation system will help meet the increasing demand for advanced building insulations that can reduce energy consumption.
“My goal is to make this system affordable so it can be commercialized and available to homeowners,” VanderHart said.
VanderHart said he enjoyed the wide variety of presentations by other competitors at the Denver event.
“It would have been hard for me to pick winners if I had been a judge,” he said. “I enjoyed listening to them all and learning about their work.”
Developed by the University of Queensland in 2008, 3MT is an annual competition held in more than 200 universities worldwide. Participants share their research with a broad audience without background in the research subject areas.
VanderHart’s research is supported by the Alaska Regional Collaboration for Technology Innovation and Commercialization program, an initiative of the Department of the Navy’s Office of Naval Research.