Prof. Andrea Alu (The City University of New York)
Andrea Alù is the Founding Director and Einstein Professor at the Photonics Initiative, CUNY Advanced Science Research 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 AAAS, IEEE, OSA, SPIE and APS, a Simons Investigator, a Highly Cited Researcher, a DoD Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellow, and has received several scientific awards, including the IEEE Kiyo Tomiyasu Award (2019), the ICO Prize in Optics (2016), the NSF Alan T. Waterman award (2015), the OSA Adolph Lomb Medal (2013), and the URSI Issac Koga Gold Medal (2011).
Prof. Habib Ammari (ETH Zürich)
Habib Ammari is a Professor of Applied Mathematics at ETH Zürich. Before moving to ETH, he was a Director of Research at the Department of Mathematics and Applications at Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris. He received a Bachelor's degree in 1992, a Master's degree in 1993, and a PhD in applied mathematics in 1995, all from the Ecole Polytechnique, France. Following this, he received a Habilitation degree in Mathematics from the University of Pierre & Marie Curie in Paris three years later. Habib Ammari is a world-leading expert in wave propagation phenomena in complex media, mathematical modelling in photonics and phononics, and mathematical biomedical imaging. He has published more than two hundred research papers, eight high profile research-oriented books and edited eight books on contemporary issues in applied mathematics. He has advised thirty-four PhD students and twenty-three postdoctoral researchers. Habib Ammari was awarded with several international prizes.
Prof. Steven Cummer (Duke University)
Steven Cummer's current research spans different aspects of applied electromagnetics and wave propagation, with a common thread of exploiting the interaction of wave fields with complicated structures and environments to learn things about the source or structure and environment. His current research interests are in a range of fields that are linked by the common thread of wave propagation in complex materials and environments. Prof. Cummer has produced some important results in these fields, including the first full-wave simulations of the electromagnetic version of these materials which demonstrated their experimental feasibility, being also the first to show that the transformation concept could be applied to acoustic waves, thereby showing that acoustic cloaking was possible. More recently he also designed, built, and experimentally demonstrated an acoustic cloaking shell in air.
Prof. Sir John Pendry, FRS (Imperial College London)
John Pendry is a condensed matter theorist and has worked at Imperial College since 1981. He has worked extensively on electronic and structural properties of surfaces developing the theory of low energy diffraction and of electronic surface states. More recently he turned his attention to photonic materials this interest led to his present research into the remarkable electromagnetic properties of materials where the normal response to electromagnetic fields is reversed, leading to negative values for the refractive index. In collaboration with scientists at Marconi he designed a series of metamaterials, completely novel materials with properties not found in nature. These designs were subsequently the basis for new concepts with radical consequences, such as the first material with a negative refractive index, the concept of a perfect lens, and a prototype cloaking device, which have both caught the imagination of the world’s media.
Prof. John Willis, FRS (Cambridge University)
John Willis is Emeritus Professor of Theoretical Solid Mechanics in the University of Cambridge. He undertook his undergraduate and graduate studies in Mathematics at Imperial College. During his career, he has held the following positions: Assistant Lecturer, Department of Mathematics, Imperial College (1962-64), Research Associate, Courant Institute (1964-65), Senior Assistant/Assistant Director of Research, DAMTP Cambridge (1965-72), Professor of Applied Mathematics, Bath (1972-94 and 2000-01), Professor of Theoretical Solid Mechanics, DAMTP Cambridge (1994-2000 and 2001-07), Professeur de Mécanique, Ecole Polytechnique (part-time, 1998-2004). He was Editor of the Journal of Mechanics and Physics of Solids (1982-2006). Major research interests have included static and dynamic problems for anisotropic media, problems of irradiation damage of materials, structural integrity, effective properties of composite materials (both static and dynamic), mechanics of nonlinear composites, stability of strained-layer semiconductor devices. Recent work has been on strain-gradient plasticity and the dynamics of composites (as applied to acoustic metamaterials). He was elected FRS (1992), Foreign Member, US National Academy of Engineering (2004) and Associé Etranger, Académie des Sciences (2009). Awards include the Timoshenko Medal, ASME (1997), Prager Medal, SES (1998), Euromech Solid Mechanics Prize (2012).
