Plenary talks

Itai Cohen

Cornell University, USA

"Elastronic Metamaterials"

Itai Cohen is a pioneer in the fields of microscopic robotics and origami inspired metamaterials. His research is remarkably interdisciplinary and includes investigations of shear thickening suspensions, viscosity metamaterials, biological fiber networks, insect flight and determining how audiences at heavy metal concerts coordinate their movement.

Professor Cohen received his BS in Physics from the University of California at Los Angeles, and his PhD in Physics from the University of Chicago. Following his graduate studies, he was a Post-doctoral fellow in Physics and the Division of Engineering and Applied Science at Harvard University. In 2005 he joined Cornell and is currently a professor of Physics. Professor Cohen is an NSF Career grant recipient, he is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, and is the recipient of the Kappa Delta Ann Doner Vaughn Award for his work on cartilage mechanics. He has served as a Feinberg and Braginsky fellow (2012) and the Rosi and Max Varon Visiting Professor at the Weizmann Institute (2021) and the van der Waals Visiting Professor at the University of Amsterdam (2022). He has published over 140 research articles, given over 300 invited seminars, colloquia and conference presentations, and co-authored the book Finding Your Research Voice: Story Telling and Theater Skills for Bringing Your Presentation to Life. His work has been covered by various outlets including the BBC, Scientific American, Forbes, NPR, and the NYTimes. He also holds the Guinness world record for making the smallest walking robot.

Dragomir Neshev

The Australian National University, Australia

"Dielectric metasurfaces for immaging and quantum applcations"

Dragomir Neshev is the Director of the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Transformative Meta-Optical Systems (TMOS) and a Professor of Physics at the Australian National University (ANU).
He received a PhD from Sofia University, Bulgaria, in 1999. Since then, he has worked at several research centres worldwide before joining the ANU in 2002. He has been recognised for his outstanding work with numerous honours, including being named a Highly Cited Researcher (Web of Science, 2021-2024), receiving a Queen Elizabeth II Fellowship (ARC, 2010), and being awarded a Marie-Curie Individual Fellowship (European Commission, 2001). His activities span several branches of optics, including meta-optics, metasurfaces, periodic photonic structures, and singular optics.

Rachel Grange

ETH Zurich, Switzerland

"Nonlinear Nanomaterials for Classical and Quantum Photonic Devices"

Rachel Grange is a Full Professor of Photonics at ETH Zurich. She has been an Associate Professor and an Assistant Professor in the field of integrated optics and nonlinear nanophotonics in the Department of Physics at ETH Zurich since 2015. From 2011 to 2014, she was junior group leader at the Friedrich Schiller University in Jena, Germany. Her research covers material investigations at the nanoscale, top-down and bottom-up fabricated nanostructures with metal-oxides, mainly lithium niobate and barium titanate for classical and quantum devices.

Silveirinha Mario

University of Lisbon, Portugal

"Chiral Gain Photonics and Beyond"

Mário G. Silveirinha is a Full Professor of Electrical Engineering at the University of Lisbon and a Senior Researcher at Instituto de Telecomunicações. He received the Ph.D. degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering (with a minor in Applied Mathematics) from Instituto Superior Técnico, Technical University of Lisbon, in 2003. Professor Silveirinha is a Fellow of the IEEE, of Optica (OSA), and of the American Physical Society (APS), and a member of the Academy of Sciences of Lisbon. He was a founding editor of Physical Review Applied. He has held visiting appointments at the University of Pennsylvania (2004–2005, 2010–2011) and served as Chercheur CNRS en Physique at the University of Montpellier in 2017 and 2024. His research spans plasmonics and metamaterials, quantum optics, and topological physics.

Harry Atwater

California Institute of Technology, USA

"Starshot: From Metaphotonics to Spacecraft"

Harry Atwater is the Otis Booth Leadership Chair of the Division of Engineering and Applied Science, and the Howard Hughes Professor of Applied Physics and Materials Science at the California Institute of Technology. Atwater’s scientific effort lies at the junction of energy conversion processes and nanoscale light-matter interactions.

His current research in energy centres on high-efficiency photovoltaics, photoelectrochemical processes for the generation of solar fuels, and carbon capture and removal. His research has resulted in world records for solar photovoltaic conversion and photoelectrochemical water splitting. Atwater was an early pioneer in nanophotonics and plasmonics; he gave the name to the field of plasmonics in 2001. His current research also spans fundamental phenomena in nanophotonics, low-dimensional materials and plasmonics. Currently, Atwater is the Director for the Liquid Sunlight Alliance (LiSA), a Department of Energy Hub program for solar fuels. From 2014-2020, he served as Director of the Joint Centre for Artificial Photosynthesis (JCAP), the DOE Energy Innovation Hub for solar fuels.

Atwater is a Member of the US National Academy of Engineering and a Web of Science Highly Cited Researcher from 2014 to 2024. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including the von Hippel Award of the Materials Research Society. He is also a Fellow of the APS, MRS, Optica, SPIE, and the National Academy of Inventors. He is also the founding Editor-in-Chief of the journal ACS Photonics. Atwater is also the founder of 5 early-stage companies, including Captura, which is developing scalable approaches to carbon dioxide removal from ocean water, and Alta Devices, which set world records for photovoltaic cell and module efficiency.