Watch: Andrea Alù on Controlling Light and Sound Using Metamaterials

CUNY’s Andrea Alù describes how metamaterials — materials engineered to have properties not found in nature — are paving the way for a wide range of technological advancements, from cellular communications to energy harvesting to radar cloaking.

Andrea Alù is the Einstein Professor of Physics and professor of electrical engineering at the City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate Center. He is also the founding director of the Photonics Initiative at the CUNY Advanced Science Research Center, director of the Simons Collaboration on Extreme Wave Phenomena Based on Symmetry and a Simons Investigator in Physics. Alù is affiliated with the Wireless Networking and Communications Group and the Applied Research Laboratories, both based at the University of Texas at Austin, where he is a senior research scientist and adjunct professor.

Alù’s work on the manipulation of light in artificial materials and metamaterials has shown how clever designs may surpass what had previously been thought to be limitations on wave propagation in materials. He has developed new concepts for cloaking, one-way propagation of waves in materials, dramatic enhancement of nonlinearities in nanostructures and ultrathin optical devices based on metasurfaces and twisted metamaterials.