World Refrigeration Day to Highlight ‘Cool Careers’

The third annual World Refrigeration Day (WRD), to be held on June 26, (Lord Kelvin’s birthday), will highlight the need for a new generation of engineers, technicians and others – to embark on careers in refrigeration.

The careers theme –  “Cooling Champions: Cool Careers for a Better World”– will be the subject of a series of webinars that will run over a two-week period in June. The schedule of webinars and topics will be available in the coming weeks at www.worldrefrigerationday.org.

 “The objective of the webinars is to inspire students and those early in their career path to join the more than 15 million people worldwide currently employed in the refrigeration sector, making the world better,” said WRD in a statement.

The webinars will be conducted by groups whose networks reach into both developed and developing nations. WRD has partnered with seven organizations to make students and young professionals globally aware of career opportunities in fields relying on refrigeration technology.

Campaign partners include UNEP OzonAction, ASHRAE, the European Partnership for Energy and the Environment (EPEE), the Federation of Ibero-American Air Conditioning and Refrigeration Associations (FAIAR), the International Institute of Refrigeration (IIR), the Indian Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air Conditioning Engineers (ISHRAE), and the Pan-African Union of Associations of African Actors in Refrigeration and air-Conditioning (U-3ARC).

“Partnering with these organizations enables the refrigeration industry to reach out globally, with particular emphasis on developing countries, to expand the workforce that supports life-giving and society-dependent technologies,” said Steve Gill, former president of the Institute of Refrigeration. “Opportunities within the industry abound for young people with a wide range of career aspirations. Advanced cooling technologies provide them with a profession that improves life in their communities and in the world as a whole.”

A Range of Topics

Each campaign partner will target career opportunities with webinars in regional languages. Special emphasis will be given to the following sectors:  

• Cold Chain,
• Refrigerant Management,
• Indoor Air Quality,
• Sustainability,
• Heat Pumps, and
• Not-in-Kind Technologies.

Gender equality and promoting women in cooling careers will be highlighted in this year’s campaign as well.

Some of the topics to be discussed include:

• Who researches how food can be preserved from its source to the table and how vaccines and medicines can be shipped around the world?
• Who enables data centers to function?
• How can climate change be stabilized while not sacrificing modern convenience?
• Who safely manages the processes that enable air to be cooled?
• How can the quality of indoor air be improved, and disease transmission prevented?

World Refrigeration Day is supported globally by industry, professional groups, scientific and engineering associations, as well as by governments and individuals.