Combining clothing styles of the past and technology of the future, Konrad Rykaczewski, a Fulton Schools professor of mechanical engineering, is developing designs for attire to help us live relatively comfortably in hot desert regions. He envisions clothes with embedded cooling devices that would effectively create “heat shields.” Using his expertise in thermal engineering, Rykaczewski is designing materials for clothing that would be made of temperature-regulating fabric containing tubes filled with circulating liquid. One possibility: Materials containing liquid metal that can conduct heat but feel as soft as skin.

See Also: Cool future fashion: Personal cooling as part of social adaptation to hotter climates, by Konrad Rykaczewski, in the journal Temperature