From operations to Innovation: The Story Behind HEATJAC
Quite often, progress is born from a problem.
A board-certified anesthesiologist by trade, HEATJAC founder Mark Silverberg spent years standing for hours in cold, uncomfortable operating rooms. Like a lot of clinicians, he made do. Extra layers. Improvised fixes. But nothing built for the job.
Day after day of cold working conditions sparked a question: what if thermal comfort could be approached differently, even in challenging environments?
Simple by today's standards, HEATJAC’s earliest concepts explored garment designs, thermal materials, pocket systems, and insulation methods. But while every prototype solved one problem, it raised another.
How do we distribute and retain heat?
Can we provide real thermal performance and still be lightweight?
What’s the right design to ensure comfort for an entire shift?
Those questions kicked off years of research and development. Different fabrics. Different insulation. Different heating and cooling approaches. Some materials nailed performance but killed comfort. Others moved great but lost efficiency.
Eventually, HEATJAC’s efforts outgrew the idea of building a better vest, and the goal shifted from product to platform.
The deeper into R&D Mark and the HEATJAC team went, the clearer it became: the demand for temperature control isn’t limited to the everyday cold of the OR. Construction crews, field operators, transportation workers, first responders and more are all experiencing a similar struggle. Indoors or outdoors, from work environments to leisure settings, anyone whose performance depends on staying comfortable in challenging or shifting conditions needs a solution too.
Today, HEATJAC runs on that mission.
We’re a thermal innovation company building wearable technology for the real world. And while they don’t tell the whole story, products like HEATJAC REFLECT™ and HEATJAC CORE™ are proof points of progress born from a problem worth solving.
Explore the origins of HEATJAC, the research that led us here, and the vision driving the future of thermal innovation.