Johnson Controls CEO Joakim Weidemanis visited The University of Texas at Arlington (UTA) on Sept. 22 alongside Austin Domenici, president of Global Data Center Solutions, and Imran Latif, global vice president of Technology & Innovation, Data Centers.
The visit highlighted expanding work between UTA and Johnson Controls on cooling, heat recovery and infrastructure solutions for data centers. Discussions included plans for a new research facility, the C3H2-AI Center, where advanced data center thermal management systems will be developed, tested and validated.
The planned C3H2-AI Center will serve as a hub for advancing technologies that manage, optimize and recover heat across the data center ecosystem. The 15,000-square-foot facility, designed for 8 to 10 megawatts of power capacity, will support the development of cooling and heat recovery solutions from the chip level to the facility level. The center will provide an environment where researchers and industry leaders can evaluate new approaches to cooling, energy use and heat recovery at meaningful scale.
The JCI executives had a dialogue with UTA Acting President Archie Holmes, who expressed strong support for the collaboration.
Through its Electronics, MEMS and Nanoelectronics Systems Packaging Center, founded by UTA's Dereje Agonafer, Presidential Distinguished Professor and member of the National Academy of Engineering, UTA has established expertise in advanced electronics cooling, liquid cooling and system-level thermal management for high-performance computing and data center platforms. Its research spans the full cooling hierarchy, from chip- and package-level heat transfer to rack- and facility-level cooling architectures, supported by advanced testing, modeling and performance validation.
Complementing UTA's research capabilities, Johnson Controls brings expertise in cooling, controls and heat recovery systems used in modern data center environments. By connecting heat capture, transfer, rejection and reuse across the thermal management chain, the company helps customers improve efficiency, support higher-density computing environments and unlock greater infrastructure capacity. This integrated approach to thermal management can reduce non-IT energy consumption by up to 50% in a modeled design compared with conventional cooling methods.
The collaboration builds on previous work between the organizations. UTA previously tested and validated a Johnson Controls liquid-to-liquid coolant distribution unit as part of NVIDIA qualification efforts, demonstrating its capabilities in evaluating advanced liquid cooling systems. Building on that foundation, Johnson Controls will contribute technical expertise to efforts spanning chip-level cooling, facility-scale thermal management and heat recovery.
The work is expected to accelerate the development of solutions that support continued growth in computing while reducing resource demands, recovering more usable heat and improving performance across the data center ecosystem.
About The University of Texas at Arlington (UTA)
The University of Texas at Arlington is a growing public research university in the heart of Dallas-Fort Worth. With a student body of over 42,700, UTA is the second-largest institution in the University of Texas System, offering more than 190 undergraduate and graduate degree programs. Recognized as a Carnegie R-1 university, UTA stands among the nation's top 5% of institutions for research activity. UTA and its 300,000 alumni generate an annual economic impact of $28.8 billion for the state. The University has received the Innovation and Economic Prosperity designation from the Association of Public and Land Grant Universities and has earned recognition for its focus on student access and success, considered key drivers to economic growth and social progress for North Texas and beyond.
