"Sunny Sethi, founder of HEN Technologies, doesn't sound like someone who's disrupted an industry that has remained largely unchanged since the 1960s. His company builds fire nozzles - specifically, nozzles that it says increase suppression rates by up to 300% while conserving 67% of water. But Sethi is matter-of-fact about this achievement, more focused on what's next than what's already been done. And what's next sounds a lot bigger than fire nozzles."
"After nabbing his PhD at the University of Akron, researching surfaces and adhesion, he founded ADAP Nanotech, an outfit that developed a carbon nanotube-based portfolio and won Air Force Research Lab grants. Next, at SunPower, he developed new materials and processes for shingled photovoltaic modules. When he landed next at a company called TE Connectivity, he worked on devices with new adhesive formulations to enable faster manufacturing in the automotive industry."
"A few years later came the Thomas Fire - the only megafire they'd ever see, they thought. Then came the Camp Fire, then the Napa-Sonoma fires. Then, in 2019, came the breaking point. Sethi was traveling during evacuation warnings while his wife was home alone with their then three-year-old daughter, no family nearby, facing a potential evacuation order. "She was really mad at me," Sethi recalls. "She's like, 'Dude, you need to fix this, otherwise you're not a real scientist.'""
Sunny Sethi founded HEN Technologies in June 2020 in Hayward after experiencing multiple California megafires that threatened his family. He earned a PhD at the University of Akron and previously founded ADAP Nanotech, secured Air Force Research Lab grants, and worked at SunPower and TE Connectivity developing nanomaterials, photovoltaic processes, and adhesive formulations for manufacturing. HEN Technologies designs fire nozzles claimed to increase suppression rates by up to 300% while conserving 67% of water. National Science Foundation funding supported computational fluid dynamics research for nozzle development. Sethi frames his multidisciplinary background as enabling flexible, bias-free problem solving and plans ambitions beyond nozzles.
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