Dr. Nicholas Jankowski ’00

Mechanical Engineering

Nicholas Jankowski, Ph.D. is the deputy chief of the RF devices and circuits branch at the Army Research Laboratory (ARL) under the U.S. Army's Combat Capabilities Development Command (DEVCOM) in Adelphi, Md. He has been a federal employee at the laboratory since 2004 and is currently focused on establishing a diamond electronics and packaging lab at the Adelphi Laboratory Center for high-efficiency radar, communications and sensor equipment. Jankowski previously managed an Army-led multi-agency research program on topologically enhanced electronic devices and he created and led the laboratory's thermal science and engineering team that was focused on high-power electronics cooling, solid-liquid phase change for thermal protection, solid-state thermal power conversion, waste energy recovery and thermal material characterization.  Before ARL, Jankowski worked with the U.S. Army Research Development and Engineering Command's Intelligence and Information Warfare Directorate at Ft. Monmouth, N.J., developing signals intelligence and RF direction-finding payloads for unmanned vehicles.

Jankowski presently chairs the mechanical working group of the Interagency Advanced Power Group, a congressionally chartered organization coordinating power and energy research across federal agencies. He has authored or co-authored over 50 government and open literature technical articles, regularly reviews for academic journals including Applied Energy, Applied Thermal Engineering and the Journal of Electronics Packaging, and serves as a thermal and electronics subject matter expert and contract monitor for other military services, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), NASA and the National Science Foundation (NSF).  Jankowski has served on the Rowan University College of Engineering Dean’s Advisory Council since 2023 and the mechanical engineering advisory board, which he currently chairs, since 2019. 

Jankowski earned a Bachelor of Science in mechanical engineering as part of Rowan University's first class of engineering students in 2000, a Master of Science in electrical engineering from the University of Virginia in 2002, and a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from the University of Maryland in 2020 with a research focus on transient heat transfer with phase change materials in high-power systems.  He is a member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE), the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and Eta Kappa Nu. Outside of professional activities, Jankowski has been an active leader at the local and district level of the Baltimore area council of the Boy Scouts of America since 2009, being awarded the Arrowhead District Award of Merit in 2023. He is also a member of the Free Software Foundation and is an active open-source software developer for the GNU Octave project.