Prof recognized by NSERC for work with novel materials

U of T professor George Eleftheriades is one of six recipients this year of the prestigious Steacie Fellowship from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC). Eleftheriades, a researcher in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, works on materials with unique electromagnetic properties that could have a significant impact in telecommunications.
Eleftheriades has been developing metamaterials, “man-made materials with superior electromagnetic properties that cannot be found in nature,” he says. When beams of electromagnetic waves encounter natural materials, they are bent at an angle depending on the refractive index of the material, which is a positive number.
However, it is possible to make metamaterials with a negative refractive index that bend waves in the opposite direction. “In negative-refractive-index (NRI) metamaterials,” says Eleftheriades, “waves can be thought of as propagating backwards instead of forwards.” The idea for NRI metamaterials has been around since the sixties, but only recently has it been made successfully.
In Eleftheriades’ lab, metamaterials have been synthesized as compact, planar structures. Because they bend waves in the opposite direction as natural materials, they can be made to focus waves rather than disperse them, and so they can be serve as “lenses capable of resolving sub-wavelength details,” says Eleftheriades. “Materials with such peculiar properties have the potential to significantly change the world of wireless communications, radar, and medical imaging through sub-wavelength resolution.”
The Steacie Fellowship, well known among university researchers, is awarded each year to up to six scientists and engineers, still early in their careers but who do outstanding, original research. For Eleftheriades, this award means the “recognition of the significance of [his group’s] work by [his] peers,” he says. “There is a practical benefit in terms of a teaching relief and increased funding over a period of two years which will help us to move forward with our plans at an accelerated pace.”
In fact, Eleftheriades’s work could see applications very soon. “Some of the wireless devices that are being developed could be used within a span of one to two years from now,” he says. In perhaps five to ten years from now, Eleftheriades foresees metamaterials that can function for many different kinds of waves, “from acoustics to optics and beyond.” He adds that “eventually some tunability function will be embedded [in metamaterials] such that their properties could be tailored at will or adapt to a changing environment.”
Eleftheriades advises aspiring researchers to “follow your instincts and do work that fulfills you…try to lead rather than follow trends.” When he is not working, he spends his limited spare time with his family and reads classical philosophy and literature. He adds that “one of the best aspects of conducting research and teaching at U of T is the interaction with the students.”