Cultura y noticias hispanas del Valle del Hudson
From Legos to Chips: Mason Hernández’s Journey
and How a Group of Students Is Using 3D Printing to Cool Artificial Intelligence
October 2026At eleven years old, Mason Hernández had achieved one of the great milestones of
childhood: saving enough money to buy his first toy with his own money. Mason remembers
going to the store to buy a very specific one, the Lego Ninjago City set. “When I finished it, I felt really proud of myself,” he recalls. What eleven-year-old Mason Hernández may not have known at the time was that his obsession with Legos would eventually turn into another passion: imagining worlds and building realities in 3D, just as he is doing today while completing his second year of Mechanical Engineering at SUNY New Paltz.
It was there, at the State University of New York at New Paltz, that he joined the AC2
summer program, specifically a research group whose members happened to have something in common beyond their passion for engineering: they are all people of immigrant descent.
Over five weeks, under the guidance of Professor Ping-Chuan Wang, Mason Hernández and his classmates Marwa Zeroual and David Cacsire developed a cooling plate for computer chips, a device found in nearly every electronic device humans use today. And because of this, they are tackling an issue that has been making headlines on the front pages of some of the world’s largest newspapers.
The reason? Artificial intelligence appears to be developing at a speed that perhaps no other human technology has ever reached. A chatbot like the first ChatGPT, which dates back to 2022, has less than four years later, led major companies to consider how to optimize their operations with artificial intelligence, replacing human labor. The many artificial intelligence models that exist today require supercomputer chips to operate, and those chips need to be kept at low temperatures. Cooling the chips requires water.
Mason Hernández, whose parents are from Ecuador, explains that “these artificial intelligence data centers basically have supercomputers to operate themselves. And as these computers become much more powerful, the chips generate much more heat because more actions are required within the machines themselves. So, even though that technology has been evolving rapidly, our cooling technology has not evolved at the same pace. For example, if you know anything about PlayStations, they still use fans. That cooling technology is being implemented in these supercomputers, which have a better, although imperfect, liquid cooling system. And that is what we were experimenting with.”
Mason became interested in the Hudson Valley Additive Manufacturing Center, or HVAMC. He remembers that during his tour of the university’s engineering school, “I wasn’t really paying attention because I just wanted to go home. But then they took us to the HVAMC, which is our 3D printing lab, and they simply displayed all these intricate structures. I remember there was a fly and a peach, and both pieces looked real. Everything was just so cool. It really is an amazing environment because you see so many things happening, and you want to be part of it.”
Once he became a student, Hernández got a job at the HVAMC, where he began learning more about 3D printing. So when he learned that Professor Ping-Chuan Wang would be leading a course in the summer of 2026 as part of the AC2 program — which promotes academic resources for students facing economic disadvantage — he felt he had to apply. The course would focus on working with cooling plates using 3D printing, and that ultimately convinced him to join. “I always wanted to be an architect, but my dad always pushed me to become an engineer because he said I could handle the math and physics behind it,” Mason says. “So that’s really where I ended up, but I always wanted to design things, draw things, create, have an idea, put it on paper, and then see it come to life. And that’s also where 3D printing comes in, because I have an idea, I make it on my computer, and then this machine simply produces it.”
When the summer program began, the experience of all the students was essential to developing the final prototype of the cooling plate, and Mason stood out because of his experience with 3D printing. In fact, part of what makes this project innovative, in addition to being developed in just five weeks, is that 3D-printing cooling plates can lower production costs and create plates specifically designed for each chip.
Professor Wang explains that “using a cooling plate to cool a chip is not something new, but
traditionally, conventional machining is used to manufacture them. This means that the plates are not actually designed to fit a particular chip. But every chip, every design, works differently, so its temperature distribution can also be different. Our goal is to design the structure of the cooling plate to fit the chip, essentially adapting it to the chip’s circuit design. With 3D printing, you can manufacture any design you want. So what we are looking for is a solution where we can examine the chip’s design, determine the temperature distribution, and then create our own design and manufacture a unique cooling plate.”
Data centers have been at the center of a global discussion about ethics, artificial intelligence, and the environment. According to the Environmental and Energy Study Institute (EESI), based in Washington, D.C., data centers are increasingly using drinking water: a large data center can consume around five million gallons per day. That is equivalent to the amount of water used by 10,000 to 50,000 people. Although in New York State Governor Kathy Hochul signed Executive Order 62 on July 14 of this year, establishing a temporary moratorium on new hyperscale data centers while the state
develops environmental and regulatory standards, community concerns remain about the
pollution and massive consumption of water and energy seen in other states such as Wyoming and Georgia. These concerns have also been heightened by recent statements from former Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon, who resigned from the company in September and has publicly warned about the risks of the rapid development of artificial intelligence.
And while neither Mason Hernández nor his classmates, nor Professor Ping-Chuan Wang, are responsible for public policy regarding data centers, local science projects like this one seek solutions. “As an engineering educator, I believe we can only focus on what we can actually do,” Wang reflects. “Right now, for example, we are trying to think about how to use AI as an effective educational tool. That is essentially our job. At the same time, if I put on my engineer hat, I ask myself, how do we make it possible to take an ethical approach to implementing AI? This chip-cooling project is our attempt to address the environmental problems associated with AI. So this is something we can control, something that at least I can control,” he added.
If they secure state funding, Professor Wang’s research with his students will focus on
understanding how to strategically cool the hottest areas of computer chips. Mason explains that during their research, they observed that cooling plates can save up to 85% of water
consumption. Improving this technology could therefore help create an industry that has less of an environmental impact. And so, a story that began for Mason with his Lego Ninjago City has now brought him to the pages of this magazine as a story that allows us to imagine a better future for both our water and artificial intelligence. “I really just want to have the opportunity to do a lot of things and to 3D-print a lot of things. I want to make something for my friends, my brother, and my parents. And even though I don’t know yet what I’m going to make, I know it will come along the way,” Mason says.back to top
COPYRIGHT 2026
La Voz, Cultura y noticias hispanas del Valle de Hudson
summer program, specifically a research group whose members happened to have something in common beyond their passion for engineering: they are all people of immigrant descent.
Over five weeks, under the guidance of Professor Ping-Chuan Wang, Mason Hernández and his classmates Marwa Zeroual and David Cacsire developed a cooling plate for computer chips, a device found in nearly every electronic device humans use today. And because of this, they are tackling an issue that has been making headlines on the front pages of some of the world’s largest newspapers.
The reason? Artificial intelligence appears to be developing at a speed that perhaps no other human technology has ever reached. A chatbot like the first ChatGPT, which dates back to 2022, has less than four years later, led major companies to consider how to optimize their operations with artificial intelligence, replacing human labor. The many artificial intelligence models that exist today require supercomputer chips to operate, and those chips need to be kept at low temperatures. Cooling the chips requires water.
Mason Hernández, whose parents are from Ecuador, explains that “these artificial intelligence data centers basically have supercomputers to operate themselves. And as these computers become much more powerful, the chips generate much more heat because more actions are required within the machines themselves. So, even though that technology has been evolving rapidly, our cooling technology has not evolved at the same pace. For example, if you know anything about PlayStations, they still use fans. That cooling technology is being implemented in these supercomputers, which have a better, although imperfect, liquid cooling system. And that is what we were experimenting with.”
Mason became interested in the Hudson Valley Additive Manufacturing Center, or HVAMC. He remembers that during his tour of the university’s engineering school, “I wasn’t really paying attention because I just wanted to go home. But then they took us to the HVAMC, which is our 3D printing lab, and they simply displayed all these intricate structures. I remember there was a fly and a peach, and both pieces looked real. Everything was just so cool. It really is an amazing environment because you see so many things happening, and you want to be part of it.”
Once he became a student, Hernández got a job at the HVAMC, where he began learning more about 3D printing. So when he learned that Professor Ping-Chuan Wang would be leading a course in the summer of 2026 as part of the AC2 program — which promotes academic resources for students facing economic disadvantage — he felt he had to apply. The course would focus on working with cooling plates using 3D printing, and that ultimately convinced him to join. “I always wanted to be an architect, but my dad always pushed me to become an engineer because he said I could handle the math and physics behind it,” Mason says. “So that’s really where I ended up, but I always wanted to design things, draw things, create, have an idea, put it on paper, and then see it come to life. And that’s also where 3D printing comes in, because I have an idea, I make it on my computer, and then this machine simply produces it.”
When the summer program began, the experience of all the students was essential to developing the final prototype of the cooling plate, and Mason stood out because of his experience with 3D printing. In fact, part of what makes this project innovative, in addition to being developed in just five weeks, is that 3D-printing cooling plates can lower production costs and create plates specifically designed for each chip.
Professor Wang explains that “using a cooling plate to cool a chip is not something new, but
traditionally, conventional machining is used to manufacture them. This means that the plates are not actually designed to fit a particular chip. But every chip, every design, works differently, so its temperature distribution can also be different. Our goal is to design the structure of the cooling plate to fit the chip, essentially adapting it to the chip’s circuit design. With 3D printing, you can manufacture any design you want. So what we are looking for is a solution where we can examine the chip’s design, determine the temperature distribution, and then create our own design and manufacture a unique cooling plate.”
Data centers have been at the center of a global discussion about ethics, artificial intelligence, and the environment. According to the Environmental and Energy Study Institute (EESI), based in Washington, D.C., data centers are increasingly using drinking water: a large data center can consume around five million gallons per day. That is equivalent to the amount of water used by 10,000 to 50,000 people. Although in New York State Governor Kathy Hochul signed Executive Order 62 on July 14 of this year, establishing a temporary moratorium on new hyperscale data centers while the state
develops environmental and regulatory standards, community concerns remain about the
pollution and massive consumption of water and energy seen in other states such as Wyoming and Georgia. These concerns have also been heightened by recent statements from former Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon, who resigned from the company in September and has publicly warned about the risks of the rapid development of artificial intelligence.
And while neither Mason Hernández nor his classmates, nor Professor Ping-Chuan Wang, are responsible for public policy regarding data centers, local science projects like this one seek solutions. “As an engineering educator, I believe we can only focus on what we can actually do,” Wang reflects. “Right now, for example, we are trying to think about how to use AI as an effective educational tool. That is essentially our job. At the same time, if I put on my engineer hat, I ask myself, how do we make it possible to take an ethical approach to implementing AI? This chip-cooling project is our attempt to address the environmental problems associated with AI. So this is something we can control, something that at least I can control,” he added.
If they secure state funding, Professor Wang’s research with his students will focus on
understanding how to strategically cool the hottest areas of computer chips. Mason explains that during their research, they observed that cooling plates can save up to 85% of water
consumption. Improving this technology could therefore help create an industry that has less of an environmental impact. And so, a story that began for Mason with his Lego Ninjago City has now brought him to the pages of this magazine as a story that allows us to imagine a better future for both our water and artificial intelligence. “I really just want to have the opportunity to do a lot of things and to 3D-print a lot of things. I want to make something for my friends, my brother, and my parents. And even though I don’t know yet what I’m going to make, I know it will come along the way,” Mason says.back to top
COPYRIGHT 2026
La Voz, Cultura y noticias hispanas del Valle de Hudson
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