Nader Engheta

I am grateful to three dear friends, Professor Andrea Alu, Professor Albert Polman, and Professor Pino Strangi, for organizing a wonderful workshop on Metamaterials at UPenn last week, on the occasion of my 70th birthday. Many friends, colleagues, collaborators, and some of the alumni from my group participated in this event, which included fascinating scientific talks and great friendship. I am thankful to all the participants. Special thanks to Andrea, Albert, Pino, Ms. Erin Dowling (the event and communication coordinator), and Ms. Danielle Kopicko (the director of our ESE department).

Our most recent work, published in Nature Communications. In this work, we presented an idea for “freezing”, amplifying, and then “thawing” electromagnetic waves using temporal non-Foster metastructures. For more details, please see: Victor Pacheco-Pena, Yasaman Kiasat, Diego M. Solis, Brian Edwards, and Nader Engheta, Nature Communications 16:2757, March 20, 2025, https://rdcu.be/eelKT

The 632nm Podcast hosts interviewed me on September 21, 2024, covering various topics ranging from my research journey, my fascination with wave physics, scientific curiosity, optics and AI, and more. The video is around two hours long, but you can get to the different sections at the time stamps shown in the link below.
https://youtu.be/yS2EHl4iH4c?t=59

Many thanks to the 632nm hosts, Dr. Mikhail Shalaginov, Dr. Xinghui Yin, and Dr. Michael Dubrovsky, for their great efforts and kind invitation to me for this interview.
02:19 Fascination with Electromagnetics
03:14 Journey from Tehran to Caltech
05:39 Exploring Chirality and Metamaterials
08:21 Innovations in Polarization Imaging
36:12 Exploring Antennas and Metatronics
36:46 Dream Job in the Tech Industry
37:24 Optics and Artificial Intelligence
39:44 Brain Waves and Neuroscience
53:20 Optical Computing vs. Electronics
01:15:55 Exploring Optical and Electronic Constraints
01:17:47 Optical Computing: Efficiency and Challenges
01:20:58 Historical Insights and Modern Applications
01:26:20 Nonlinearity in Optical Systems
01:32:59 Future Directions and Advice for Young Researchers

Here is the YouTube video of my TEDx talk at UPenn on April 6, 2024. Many thanks to the TEDxPenn team for their great efforts.

Doing Math at the Speed of Light | Nader Engheta | TEDxPenn Professor Engheta’s talk explores the frontier of optical computing, tracing the evolution from the ENIAC to cutting-edge nanoscale devices. Highlighting the...