Metamaterials Pioneer to Receive IEEE Award

George V. Eleftheriades, PhD, will receive the 2008 Kiyo Tomiyasu Award for his research into negative refractive index metamaterials, IEEE announced today. Metamaterials have had a profound impact on a variety of technologies including high-speed digital circuits, medical imaging, radar and wireless telecommunications. Eleftheriades, professor and Canada Research Chair in the department of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Toronto, introduced transmission-line "left-handed" metamaterials, which have unusual properties including a negative index of refraction over wide operating bandwidths and with low losses. His research demonstrates how waves can become focused onto a point, rather than diverging outward, enabling the use of flat-surfaced lenses with significantly higher resolution than conventional lenses that are influencing applications such as medical diagnostic imaging and microscopy, IEEE said. An IEEE Fellow, Eleftheriades has served as a distinguished lecturer for the IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society and associate editor of its journal. Prior to joining the University of Toronto, he was a research scientist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Lausanne. He holds a BS from the National Technology University of Athens, Athens, Greece; and a master's in electrical engineering and doctorate from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He has authored or co-authored over 80 refereed journal papers and over 110 conference papers. The award, sponsored by the Kiyo Tomiyasu Fund and the IEEE Geoscience & Remote Sensing Society, will be presented to Eleftheriades June 17 at the 2008 International Microwave Symposium in Atlanta.