The National Science Foundation (NSF) has named Dr Andrea Alù the 2015 recipient of its Alan T. Waterman Award. This award is NSF's highest honor that annually recognizes an outstanding researcher under the age of 35 and funds his or her research in any field of science or engineering. This year's awardee will receive a $1 million grant over a five-year period for further advanced study in his field. Dr Alù is an engineering professor at the University of Texas at Austin. His research focuses on man-made materials with properties not found in nature (called metamaterials) and on the interaction of light with matter at the nano scale (plasmonics).
Dr Alù and his team achieved the bending of electromagnetic waves around objects, an effect named "cloaking", which renders the object invisible. This was achieved with both a plasmonic, as well as a mantle cloaking method. Such technologies enable the use of sensors that can detect signals without being detected. This concept can also be applied to acoustic, mechanical and matter waves.
More recently he has demonstrated non-reciprocal propagation of light or sound in specific metamaterials and developed the concept of metamaterials that can perform mathematical operations as light travels through them.
Dr Alù has received awards and recognition from a diverse group of technical societies, including the Outstanding Young Engineer Award from the IEEE Microwave Theory and Techniques Society in 2014; the Adolph Lomb Medal from the Optical Society (OSA) in 2013; the inaugural Franco Strazzabosco Award and the Medal of Representation of the President of the Republic of Italy in 2013; the Young Scientist Prize in Optics from the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics in 2013; the Early Career Investigator Award from The International Society for Optics and Photonics (SPIE) in 2012; the Isaac Koga Gold Medal from the International Union of Radio Science (URSI) in 2011 and a CAREER award from the NSF in 2010.
Dr Alù is a fellow of IEEE and OSA, a full member of URSI and a senior member of SPIE. He serves on the editorial boards of the research publications Physical Review B, Scientific Reports and Advanced Optical Materials, and as an associate editor of five journals, including Optics Express and the IEE Antennas and Wireless Propagation Letters.
