At Virginia Tech, Dr. Huxtable leads the Nanoscale Energy Transport Laboratory where he and his undergraduate and graduate students examine a variety of topics related to the flow of energy at the molecular level. They are interested in understanding the fundamental physics that control nanoscale energy transport as well as developing devices that are based on the underlying physics.

At the device level, Dr. Huxtable and his team are developing a variety of thermoelectric systems including coolers, power generators, and heat flux sensors. These devices could impact numerous technologies including thermal management and cooling for power electronics and electrical power generation for remote sensors. Other, more fundamental work, deals with understanding the mechanisms responsible for heat flow between dissimilar materials. These studies are important for the development of nanostructured composite materials where thermal transport is dominated by boundaries and interfaces.

In January 2006, Dr. Huxtable was awarded a National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) Award, which is the National Science Foundation's most prestigious award for creative junior faculty. This five-year grant will support some of Dr. Huxtable’s nanoscale thermal transport studies, the creation of a new “Nanoengineering” class at Virginia Tech, and a summer program to introduce engineering to underrepresented minority high school students.

The Nanoscale Energy Transport Laboratory is interested in energy transfer (primarily in the form of heat) at the molecular level. Some work is at the fundamental level where heat transfer across interfaces between dissimilar materials is examined. For example, in bulk materials there are few boundaries and interfaces, so their effects can often be ignored without appreciable error. For composite materials with nanoscale feature sizes (e.g., multilayer stacks of thin films, or carbon nanotubes or other nanoparticles dispersed in a polymer matrix) the interfaces between the materials become the dominant resistance to energy transport. The Laboratory does a lot of experimental work aimed at understanding how energy is transported across a boundary between different materials. For example, thermal energy in metals is carried by electrons, but in non-metals, thermal energy is conducted through vibrations between adjacent molecules or atoms. Exactly how the energy carried by the electrons in the metal is coupled to the vibrational energy in the non-metal at an interface remains poorly understood.