Eric Verploegen has a background in materials science, received his Ph.D. in Polymer Science and Technology from MIT in 2008, and worked in the energy sector for over 10 years. He joined D-Lab as a staff member in 2014 to expand D-Lab's research efforts in the areas of food, water, and energy. While a staff member at MIT D-Lab, the majority of his work focused on evaporative cooling for vegetable preservation with projects in Mali, Kenya, Uganda, Burkina Faso, Rwanda, and Gujarat, India. From 2018 to 2022 Eric was a lecturer for D-Lab's energy classes, Introduction to Energy in Global Development and Applications of Energy in Global Development.
Eric currently works full-time at CoolVeg, which he founded in 2022 to improve fruit and vegetable storage in low-income arid regions through the dissemination of the evaporative cooling based technologies and training programs that he developed while at D-Lab.
