Associate Professor Juan Felipe Torres Alvarez
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About
Juan Felipe Torres is an Associate Professor at The Australian National University (ANU), where he leads the ANU HEAT Lab, a research group dedicated to advancing technologies based on heat and mass transfer for environmental, energy, and aerospace applications. At the School of Engineering, he convenes courses in Fluid Mechanics, Heat Transfer, and Aerodynamics, and is committed to bridging real-world industry challenges with cutting-edge solutions grounded in complex transport phenomena involving coupled flows of fluids, species, and heat.
Dr Torres was trained internationally, completing his undergraduate and postgraduate studies in Japan under a prestigious Japanese Government scholarship. He was awarded a highly competitive Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) Fellowship and holds two doctoral degrees from Tohoku University (Japan) and École Centrale de Lyon (France), based on a jointly developed thesis examined independently by both institutions. His doctoral work was recognised with the Presidential Prize from Tohoku University for the best PhD thesis, and since completing his PhD he has received more than 10 national and international awards for research excellence.
Prior to joining ANU, A/Prof Torres worked at the Toshiba Corporation R&D Centre in Japan. He is currently the Founder and CEO of Soret Technologies Pty Ltd, where he leads the development and commercialisation of multichannel thermodiffusion technology to address critical challenges in water treatment.
Affiliations
Research interests
Dr Torres’ research focuses on sustainable heat and fluid flow, encompassing fluid mechanics as well as heat and mass transfer. His recent work emphasises thermodiffusive transport phenomena in multichannel devices and engineered materials, enabling efficient solar-driven systems with applications in chemical processing, energy conversion, and environmental sustainability.
His research has produced several notable contributions. Most prominently, he developed the first single-phase, materials-free thermal desalination technology—multichannel thermodiffusion—for which he has received prestigious international recognition, including the 2025 Global Prize for Innovation in Water and the 2026 Water Technology Idol. His work on hierarchical coatings for enhanced solar thermal energy conversion earned the 2023 Technology Innovation Award from SolarPACES, while his development of phase-shifting interferometry for visualising mass diffusion was recognised with the 2017 Scientific Contribution Award from the Heat Transfer Society of Japan.
Dr Torres has a strong track record of high-impact research, publishing as corresponding author in leading journals including Nature Water, Nature Communications, and Energy & Environmental Science. His work bridges fundamental transport phenomena and deployable technologies, advancing next-generation solutions for energy and water systems.