Visiting professor Andrea Alù wins Alan T. Waterman Award

The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) has named Andrea Alù as the recipient of this year’s Alan T. Waterman Award. Professor Alù (University of Texas in Austin) is currently KNAW visiting professor at AMOLF’s Center for Nanophotonics.

“The Waterman Award was created 40 years ago to recognize outstanding young researchers,” NSF Director France A. Córdova said. “Alù’s research is an example of the type of pioneering spirit the award seeks to identify. His research has already advanced our understanding of man-made materials and their most exotic wave interactions, and it promises to yield further significant results.”

Alù is a leading innovator in metamaterials, or artificial materials with properties and wave interactions not found in nature. He is best known for his pioneering research in metamaterial theory and applications, and in plasmonics. Among the many accomplishments he and his team have achieved are “cloaking” technologies capable of “bending” waves around objects, with the overall effect of rendering those objects invisible to sensors. Read more on Alù’s research group web page.

The Waterman Award will be presented to Alù at a dinner ceremony held in Washington, D.C., on May 5. He will also deliver a lecture at NSF on May 7.

Read the NSF press release

Andrea Alù

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