Francesco Monticone of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Cornell University

The interaction of electromagnetic waves with materials underpins a large variety of phenomena we are familiar with from our everyday experience, as well as many devices that have a large impact in our lives, from antennas and high-frequency circuits, to lenses, optical fibers, and lasers. Interestingly, with the advent of metamaterials, nanophotonics, and nanotechnology in the past decades, several examples of anomalous wave-matter interactions have been demonstrated, which may pave the way for a new generation of electromagnetic and photonic devices and applications. In this talk, we will review some of our recent works in developing novel approaches to manipulate electromagnetic waves, and our efforts in understanding some of their fundamental limits and tradeoffs. We will focus on topics at the frontier of this broad area of research, with emphasis on new approaches to control how electromagnetic waves are (1) scattered (invisibility devices), (2) focused (metasurfaces), and (3) confined and guided (topological/nonreciprocal materials).

Biography:

Francesco Monticone is an Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Cornell University. He received the B.Sc. and M.Sc. (summa cum laude) degrees from Politecnico di Torino, Italy, in 2009 and 2011, respectively, and the Ph.D. degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from The University of Texas at Austin in 2016, where he was advised by Prof. Andrea Alù. Dr. Monticone joined the faculty of Cornell University in January 2017.

Dr. Monticone has authored and co-authored more than 100 scientific contributions in peer-reviewed journal papers, book chapters, and peer-reviewed conference proceedings, and has given over 30 invited talks and seminars. Dr. Monticone’s current research interests are in the areas of applied electromagnetics, engineered metamaterials and metasurfaces, and theoretical/computational nanophotonics, with particular focus on innovative and extreme aspects of wave interaction with engineered materials and nano-structures.

Over the last few years, he has received several research and teaching awards, including the Michael Tien ’72 Sustained Excellence and Innovation in Engineering Education Award from Cornell University (2020), the Leopold B. Felsen Award for Excellence in Electrodynamics (2019), the AFOSR Young Investigator Program Award (YIP) from the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research (2018), the Inaugural Margarida Jacome Dissertation Award from The University of Texas at Austin (2017). Dr. Monticone is a member of the IEEE, the American Physical Society (APS), the Optical Society of America (OSA), The International Society for Optics and Photonics (SPIE) and is a full member of the International Union of Radio Science (URSI).

Address:United States