Andrea Alù

Metasurfaces for Extreme Electromagnetic Wave Control

Engineered materials and metamaterials have been offering a powerful platform for electromagnetic wave control, holding the promise to overcome the limitations of conventional materials and demonstrating extreme and unprecedented control over radio-wave propagation, extending also towards optics and photonics. In this talk, I discuss recent developments in this field of research, with an emphasis on the exciting opportunities and impact offered by planarized ultrathin metasurfaces, with a particular focus on nonlocality engineering and on the use of time, through temporal modulations and nonlinearities, as a powerful dimension for wave control. I will discuss the foundational principles of metasurfaces for extreme wave control and the impact on practical technologies of relevance to radio science and photonics, from imaging, energy and sensing to computing and communications.

Andrea Alù is a Distinguished Professor at the City University of New York (CUNY), the Founding Director of the Photonics Initiative at the CUNY Advanced Science Research Center, and the Einstein Professor of Physics at the CUNY Graduate Center. He received his Laurea (2001) and PhD (2007) from the University of Roma Tre, Italy, and, after a postdoc at the University of Pennsylvania, he joined the faculty of the University of Texas at Austin in 2009, where he was the Temple Foundation Endowed Professor until Jan. 2018. Dr. Alù is a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors (NAI), the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE), the Materials Research Society (MRS), Optica, the International Society for Optics and Photonics (SPIE), the American Physical Society (APS), the Italian Academy of Engineering, Academia Europaea, the New York Academy of Science, the Simons Society of Fellows, and the Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowship (VVBF). He is a Highly Cited Researcher since 2017, a Simons Investigator in Physics, the director of the Simons Collaboration on Extreme Wave Phenomena Based on Symmetries, and the Editor in Chief of Optical Materials Express. He has received several scientific awards, including the NSF Alan T. Waterman award, the Blavatnik National Award for Physical Sciences and Engineering, the IEEE Kiyo Tomiyasu Award, the ICO Prize in Optics, the Optica Max Born Award, and the URSI Issac Koga Gold Medal.