Kuumba and the Creative Vitality of Black People:
Meeting the Need for Sedjemic STEM Professionals
Copyright © 2024 / Harold Shujaa Baker / All rights reserved
“Kuumba / Creativity – To do always as much as we can, in the way that we can, to leave our community more beautiful and beneficial than we inherited it.”
The modern world and its advanced machinery operate because of advanced electrical energy systems. To protect our long-term interests, these energy systems need the benefit of our Kuumba / Creativity as they are developed to ensure adequate protections are in place for people and the natural world.
Like the most advanced ancient civilizations, a modern society’s stability and forward progress directly relate to its capacity for generating electrical energy. History shows the people of ancient Kemet (Egypt) were the first to harness electrical energy for practical use. But, unlike today, they didn’t pollute their environment with the burning of fossil fuels in the process.
They were not driven by the relentless pursuit of profit, but by a profound respect and appreciation for the natural world. Because of that, the electrical power systems they created were designed to function in harmony with the natural world and fundamental laws of physics.
Dr. Asegun Henry – a professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at MIT, and founder and Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of an energy storage company called Fourth Power – is made in the image of the ancient Kemetic pyramid builders and power system engineers.
As a young person, Asegun’s instinctive care and concern for the world around him caused him to worry about the emerging effects of climate change, so he committed to doing something about it. With the negative impact from burning fossil fuels becoming increasingly clear, he began working to create a sustainable alternative.
Recent development of large-scale solar panel and wind farm systems allow us to generate high levels of renewable electrical energy. With that comes the need for low cost and environmentally friendly energy storage systems that are just as important as the energy production systems.
That is where Asegun’s genius was revealed.
Through an extensive research and development effort in labs at Georgia Tech and MIT, Asegun engineered a breakthrough that allows high levels of electrical energy to be stored as heat for future recovery and use during periods where there is low or no sunlight or wind activity.
Simply put, Asegun and his team designed a very power dense thermal battery as an alternative to chemical batteries and the pollution concerns they create on a large scale.
The Fourth Power team uses electricity to produce heat – similar to the way an electrical space heater produces heat – then stores it for later use. When there is a demand for the stored energy, it is converted back to electricity using specially designed solar cells. This makes the process Asegun helped pioneer one of the lowest cost energy storage systems available.
To develop and demonstrate this concept, Asegun led a team of scientists and engineers who set a Guinness World Record by creating the highest temperature liquid pump ever made. That is the same type of innovation the world enjoyed from ancient African scientists, engineers, and pyramid builders in Kemet, and it is the exact type of innovation we need today.
We give thanks for Dr. Asegun Henry’s mastery of STEM, for his instinctive love of the natural world, and for being a model of a “sedjemic STEM professional” who is both responsible and responsive to broader concerns in using his talents and vision to apply Kuumba / Creativity in such a meaningful way.
For more information on the work and innovations inspired by Brother Dr. Asegun Henry, please visit https://gofourth.com.
