As the need to conserve energy grows more urgent, researchers are pushing to invent better took to get the job done. At Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the Field Intelligence Laboratory has created a mobile system to diagnose wasteful thermal leaks in multiple buildings at a time. At the heart of the system is an improved longwave-infrared imaging device, a sophisticated data collection system and some very specialized software. As a proof of concept, the project createdafirst-of-its-kind energy map of thermal leaks throughout the six square miles of Cambridge, Massachusetts. Jonathan Jesneck, a research scientist, and Long Phan, a doctoral candidate, are key researchers in this enterprise. Jesneck holds a Ph.D. in biomedical engineering from Duke University and specializes in large-scale computational projects useful in everything from real estate to drug discovery and medical imaging. Phan, a mechanical engineering Ph.D. student, in his first career pioneered algorithmic and proprietary trading on WallStreet. In a written exchange, they described the new system to American Scientist Associate Editor Catherine Clabby.
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