News

How electromagnetic, acoustic and optic waves interact with materials creates a foundation for various scientific and technological phenomena. With the invention of metamaterials over the last decades, wave matter interactions not found in nature have opened new possibilities for manipulating wave types across different frequencies.

WNCG Graduate Student, and recent winner of the WNCG Student Leadership Award,   Francesco Monticone, recently accepted a position as an Assistant Professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Cornell University. Monticone received a BS and MS in Electronics Engineering from Politecnico di Torino in Italy, and is a member of Prof. Andrea Alù’s Metamaterials and Plasmonics Research Group. His research interests include applied electromagnetics, metamaterials, plasmonics and nanophotonics with applications ranging from microwaves to optical frequencies.

Each year, WNCG faculty nominate one outstanding student to receive the WNCG Student Leadership Award. The award is presented to a student based on their cumulative contributions to the center, including their representation of WNCG to the greater community, their mentorship of fellow students, their research visibility and recognition from external organizations.

Prof. Robert Heath and co-authors Federico Boccardi, Angel Lozano, Thomas L. Marzetta and Petar Popovskihave been selected as the 2016 recipients of the IEEE Communication Society's Fred W. Ellersick Prize. The award is given to an influential “paper in any Communications Society magazine in the previous 3 calendar years.”  Prof. Heath and his co-authors were recognized for their paper “Five disruptive technology directions for 5G”, IEEE Communications Magazine, Volume 52, Issue 2, pp. 74 – 80, February 2014.  Prof.

A group of UT Austin and Stanford faculty members led by Prof. Gustavo de Veciana (UT ECE, WNCG) in collaboration with Profs. Sanjay Shakkottai (UT ECE, WNCG),  Lili Qiu (UT CS, WNCG),  and Ramesh Johari (MS&E, Stanford Univ.) have recently been awarded an NSF grant totaling $978,000. This project supports research in 5G wireless networks.