Current Members

Dr. David R. Smith is the James B. Duke Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at Duke University, where he also serves as Director for the Center of Metamaterials and Integrated Plasmonics. Dr. Smith is also an Adjunct Associate Professor in the Physics Department at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), and is a Visiting Professor in the Physics Department at Imperial College, London. Dr. Smith's research has been focused on advanced electromagnetic materials and composites, including photonic crystals and metamaterials.

Dr. Stéphane Larouche is currently an assistant research professor in our group, studying various aspects of linear and nonlinear metamaterials and plasmons. Dr. Larouche received his PhD in engineering physics from the Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal, under the supervision of Ludvik Martinu. Dr. Larouche has developed advanced methods for the design of optical filters with arbitrary refractive indices. He has developed a retrieval method for the characterization of nonlinear metamaterials, and currently leads several projects in the lab including infrared metamaterials.

Dr. Yaroslav Urzhumov is technical consultant at Intellectual Ventures in Bellevue, WA. In addition, he is an adjunct assistant professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, specializing in the numerical simulation of metamaterials and plasmonic nanosystems. Dr. Urzhumov received his PhD in Physics from the University of Texas, Austin, and subsequently spent two years as a technical associate at COMSOL. Dr. Urzhumov specializes in developing analysis techniques for problems involving multiple physical processes, including hybrid metamaterials.

Dr. Gleb Akselrod is a senior manager at Intellectual Ventures in Bellevue, WA. In addition, he is an adjunct professor at Duke University. As a postdocoral associate at Duke, Akselrod worked on experimental and theoretical aspects of nanoplasmonic elements and devices. Akselrod received his Ph.D. in Physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he studied transport and coherence of excitons in organic and nanostructured materials, under the supervision of Prof. Vladimir Bulovic.

Dr. Alexandre Baron is a professor at the University of Bordeaux, France and an adjunct assistant professor at Duke University. Baron was a post-doctoral associate in the CMIP group, studying theoretical and experimental aspects of nonlinear plasmonics, metamaterials and transformation optics. Upon receiving his PhD from the Paris-Sud XI University in France, where he studied nonlinear photonic crystals, he worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the Institut d'Optique in Paris on plasmonic antennas and disordered photonic crystals. Next, he spent a year at the Centre de Recherche Paul Pascal at the University of Bordeaux investigating self-assembled metamaterials.

Dr. Thomas Fromenteze is currently an assistant professor at the University of Limoges in France and an adjunct assistant professor at the Duke Center for Metamaterials and Integrated Plasmonics (CMIP). His main research interests lie in microwave and optical imaging, wave propagation in complex media and the associated inverse problems.

Patrick Bowen is a graduate student at Duke University studying optical and acoustic metamaterials and transformation methods in acoustics. Patrick received a B.S. in physics and a B.S. in electrical engineering from North Carolina State University. Upon completing his bachelor's, Patrick continued his studies at ETH Zürich where he received a M.S. in Micro-Nano Systems and studied boundary methods for solving plasmonic eigenvalue problems. Patrick's research at Duke has been focused on the analytic modeling of optical metamaterial absorbers and hydrodynamic wake and drag control using anisotropic, active permeable media.

Michael Boyarsky is a graduate student working on dynamic metasurfaces. His current focus lies in developing metasurface antennas for synthetic aperture radar (SAR) applications. His other research interests include microwave computational imaging systems and wireless power transfer devices. He received his B.S. in physics from Boston College, where he focused on THz metamaterials under Dr. Willie Padilla. He received his M.S. in mechanical engineering from Marquette University, where he focused on human-robot interaction under Dr. Philip Voglewede..

Nicholas Caira is a graduate student at Duke University working on passive and tunable microwave metamaterials. His interests include holographic imaging techniques and metamaterial design in millimeter wave spectrum. Before joining CMIP, he received a B.S. in physics from Boston College, where he focused on metamaterial imaging under Dr. Willie Padilla.

Aaron Diebold is a graduate student working on microwave metamaterials. He received a B.S. in physics and mathematics, and an M.S. in electrical engineering from the University of Cincinnati. His master’s work under Dr. Jason Heikenfeld was focused on electrowetting of non-toxic liquid metals for reconfigurable RF electronic devices.

Xander Deputy is a graduate student at Duke University with research interests in Optics and Plasmonics. He received his B.S. in Optical Sciences/Engineering from the University of Arizona and his B.S. in Applied Mathematics from the same institution.

Vinay Gowda is a graduate student currently working on wireless power transfer in the Fresnel region. He received his B.E in Electronics & Communications Engineering from Visvesvaraya Technological University, India. He then studied at UT Arlington where he received his M.S in Electrical Engineering working on wireless power transfer in the Fraunhofer region. He later worked at Intel Labs/Intel as a hardware engineer before starting his Ph.D. at Duke University.

Zhiqin Huang is a graduate student working on nonlinear optics, plasmonics, and optical bistability. She received her M.S. in Applied Physics from University of Massachusetts Boston and her B.S. in Optical Information and Technology and Business Administration from Wuhan University of Technology, China.

Xiaomeng Jia is a graduate student working on plasmonics. She received her B.S. in Physics from Shandong University in China, and continues her research in the Physics Department at Duke.

Xiaojun Liu is a graduate student at Duke. Her research areas are nonlinear metasurfaces and computational imaging.

Laura Pulido-Mancera was born in Bogotá, Colombia. She received M.S. degree (Magna cum laude) in Physics from the National University of Colombia in 2014 with Prof. Juan D. Baena. She is currently working towards the Ph.D. degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering at Duke University with Prof. David Smith. Her Ph.D. project is mainly focused on metamaterials modeling and simulation techniques for antenna applications. She also has worked in microwave imaging, focused in fast reconstruction algorithms adapted for imaging with antenna metasurfaces. Ms. Pulido-Mancera received the Best Undergraduate Thesis in Physics Award at National University of Colombia in 2011, the OSA Foundation Travel Grant Award at the Advanced Photonics for Communications Congress, 2014, and the Honorable Mention at the Antennas and Propagation Symposium (AP-S/URSI-2016).

Tim Sleasman is a graduate researcher working with dynamic metamaterial antennas for various applications. In particular, Tim is interested in utilizing metamaterial apertures in computational imaging schemes as well as for active beam steering applications.

Evan Stump is a graduate student at Duke University. He is particularly interested in nonlinear optics, plasmonics, and electrodynamics. Evan received his B.S. in physics from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst in 2016.

Kenneth Parker Trofatter graduated from the University of Tennessee Knoxville with a B.S in Engineering Physics and a B.S. in Computer Science. He worked briefly at Duke University as an associate in research in David Smith's laboratory on metamaterial microwave imaging, and has joined David's group to continue research as a Ph.D. student studying Electrical Engineering. Parker's interest are extremely broad, and span physics, mathematics, and computer science. In his spare time he enjoys hiking and disc golf.

Insang Yoo is a graduate student, currently working on metamaterial antennas. In particular, Insang is interested in tunable metamaterial antennas for wireless communication system as well as for active beam steering applications. He received his B.S. and M.S. in electrical and electronic engineering from Yonsei University (Seoul, Korea). Before joining Prof. Smith’s group, he worked for LGU+ (Seoul, Korea) and worked as a research assistant at the Natural Science Research Institute at Yonsei University.

Roberto Zecca is a graduate research assistant. His areas of interests span nonlinear optics, stimulated Brillouin scattering, elastodynamics, and computational methods in the context of metamaterials and plasmonics. Roberto received his B.S. in industrial engineering and M.S. in materials engineering from the University of Trento, Italy. For his undergraduate thesis, he investigated photocatalytic nanomaterials under Dr. Matteo Leoni. The topic of his master’s thesis was the structural analysis of electroplated Ni-W alloys. It was supervised by Dr. Matteo Leoni in collaboration with Dr. Leszek Tarkowski of the Polish Academy of Sciences.