Nader Engheta, University of Pennsylvania
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Abstract: To manipulate and tailor light, we need materials. Judiciously designed metamaterials and metasurfaces can be utilized to structure and sculpt light and achieve unconventional light-matter interaction with unprecedented functionalities. The extreme properties of such metamaterials provide novel opportunities in optics and photonics. One category of extreme metastructures is materials that function as analog computing machines when waves interact with them, providing the capability to perform mathematical operations, solve equations (such as integral and differential equations), invert matrices, and conduct vector-matrix multiplication with the near speed of light. Another class of extreme platform for light-matter interaction is four-dimensional (4D) metamaterials, in which the material parameters can rapidly vary with time in addition to their variation in space while waves are propagating in them. These 4D material structures provide additional degrees of freedom for light-matter interaction. The third category includes materials with near-zero refractive indices. Such near-zero-index structures provide unprecedented mechanisms for light-matter interaction with unconventional features and exciting properties. In this talk, I will give an overview of some of the phenomena we have introduced and explored with metastructures, including analog computing with waves, 4D optics, and, if time permits, near-zero-index photonics. I will discuss their salient features and forecast future possibilities.
Bio: Nader Engheta is the H. Nedwill Ramsey Professor at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, with affiliations in the Departments of Electrical and Systems Engineering, Physics and Astronomy, Bioengineering, and Materials Science and Engineering. He received his BS degree from the University of Tehran and his MS and Ph.D. degrees from Caltech. His current research activities span a broad range of areas, including optics, metamaterials, electrodynamics, microwaves, photonics, nano-optics, graphene photonics, imaging and sensing inspired by eyes of animal species, microwave and optical antennas, and physics and engineering of fields and waves.
He has received several awards for his research including the 2023 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Electrical Engineering from the Franklin Institute, Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Elected to Academia Europaea (The Academy of Europe) as a foreign member, the 2023 Caltech Distinguished Alumni Award, the 2020 Isaac Newton Medal and Prize from the Institute of Physics (UK), the 2020 Max Born Award from the OPTICA (formerly Optical Society), the 2024 IEEE Antennas and Propagation Chen-To Tai Distinguished Educator Award, the 2019 Ellis Island Medal of Honor, the 2018 IEEE Pioneer Award in Nanotechnology, the 2022 Hermann Anton Haus Lecture at MIT, the 2015 SPIE Gold Medal, the 2014 Balthasar van der Pol Gold Medal from the International Union of Radio Science (URSI), the 2017 William Streifer Scientific Achievement Award, the Canadian Academy of Engineering as an International Fellow, the Fellow of US National Academy of Inventors (NAI), the IEEE Electromagnetics Award, the Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowship Award from DoD, the Wheatstone Lecture in King’s College London, the IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society Distinguished Achievement Award, 2006 Scientific American Magazine 50 Leaders in Science and Technology, and the Guggenheim Fellowship. He has also received several teaching awards, including the Christian F. and Mary R. Lindback Foundation Award, the W. M. Keck Foundation's Engineering Teaching Excellence Award, and the S. Reid Warren, Jr. Award for distinguished teaching.
He is a Fellow of nine international scientific and technical organizations, i.e., IEEE, OPTICA, American Physical Society (APS), Materials Research Society (MRS), International Society for Optics and Photonics (SPIE), URSI, American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), Institute of Physics (IOP-UK) and US National Academy of Inventors (NAI). He received honorary doctoral degrees from Aalto University in Finland in 2016, the University of Stuttgart, Germany, in 2016, and Ukraine’s National Technical University Kharkiv Polytechnic Institute in 2017.
3:00 PM in PAS 201 / Zoom Meeting https://arizona.zoom.us/j/81283840289
Refreshments in PAS 218, 2:30PM