Nader Engheta is the H. Nedwill Ramsey Professor of Electrical and Systems Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania. He received the BS degree in electrical engineering from the University of Tehran, the MS degree in electrical engineering and the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering (with a minor in physics) both from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). After spending one year as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Caltech and four years as a Senior Research Scientist at Kaman Sciences Corporation's Dikewood Division in Santa Monica, CA, he joined the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania, where he rose through the ranks and is currently H. Nedwill Ramsey Professor of Electrical and Systems Engineering. He is also a member of the Mahoney Institute of Neurological Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania, and holds a secondary appointment in the Department of Bioengineering at University of Pennsylvania. He was the graduate group chair of electrical engineering from July 1993 to June 1997.
Selected as one of the Scientific American Magazine 50 Leaders in Science and Technology in 2006 for developing the concept of optical lumped nanocircuits, he is a Guggenheim Fellow, an IEEE Third Millennium Medalist, a Fellow of American Physical Society, a Fellow of IEEE, and a Fellow of the Optical Society of America, and has received various awards and distinctions for his scholarly research contributions and teaching activities including the 2008 George H. Heilmeier Award for Excellence in Research from University of Pennsylvania, the UPS Foundation Distinguished Educator term Chair for July 1999-June 2000, the Fulbright Naples Chair award for Naples, Italy, a NSF Presidential Young Investigator (PYI) award, two times (1993, 2002) recipient of the S. Reid Warren, Jr. Award for distinguished teaching from UPenn's School of Engineering and Applied Science, the Christian F. and Mary R. Lindback Foundation Award, and the W. M. Keck Foundation's 1995 Engineering Teaching Excellence Award. He was a Kilby Plenary Lecturer at the 2006 Government Microcircuit Applications and Critical Technology Conference (GOMACTech 2006), and gave a lecture at the Lester Eastman Seminar Series at School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Cornell University, in November 2007.
His current research activities span a broad range of areas including metamaterials and plasmonics, nanooptics and nanophotonics, bio-inspired sensing and imaging, miniaturized antennas and nanoantennas, physics and reverse-engineering of polarization vision in nature, mathematics of fractional operators, and physics of fields and waves phenomena. (Click here to view his research interests)
He is on the Editorial Board of the journal of Metamaterials and on the board of the journal of Waves in Random and Complex Media, was an Associate Editor of The IEEE Antennas and Wireless Propagation Letters (2002-2007), the IEEE Transactions on Antenna and Propagation (1996-2001), and the Radio Science (1991-1996). He was on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Electromagnetic Waves and Applications. He was an IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society Distinguished Lecturer during the period 1997-1999. He is a member of the American Physical Society (APS), the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), Sigma Xi, Commissions B, D, and K of the U.S. National Committee (USNC) of the International Union of Radio Science (URSI), and a member of the Electromagnetics Academy. He was the Chair (1989-91) and Vice-Chair (1988-89) of the joint chapter of the IEEE Antennas and Propagation / Microwave Theory and Techniques in the Philadelphia Section. He was an elected member of the Administrative Committee (AdCom) of the IEEE Society of Antennas and Propagation from January 2003 till December 2005. He is a member-at-large of the USNC-URSI from January 2005 till December 2008, the Vice-Chair/Chair-Elect of Commission B of USNC from January 2006 till December 2008, and will be the Chair of this Commission from January 2009 till December 2011. He has also been elected to be the Vice-Chair of the Gordon Research Conference on Plasmonics in 2010, and the Chair in 2012.
He has published numerous journal papers, book chapters, and conference articles. He has organized and chaired various special sessions in international symposia and conferences, and has guest edited/co-edited several special issues, namely, the special issue of Journal of Electromagnetic Waves and Applications on the topic of "Wave Interaction with Chiral and Complex Media" in 1992, the part special issue of the Journal of the Franklin Institute on the topic of "Antennas and Microwaves (from the 13th Annual Benjamin Franklin Symposium) in 1995, the special issue of the Wave Motion on the topic of "Electrodynamics in Complex Environments" (with L. B. Felsen) in 2001, the special issue of the IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation on the topic of "Metamaterials" (with R. W. Ziolkowski) in 2003; and the part Special issue of the Solid States Communications on the topic of "Negative Refraction and Metamaterials for Optical Science and Engineering" (with G. Shvets) in 2008. He has given numerous invited, keynote, and plenary talks in his fields of research. He has co-edited the book "Metamaterials: Engineering and Physics Explorations", Wiley-IEEE Press, June 2006.