Archives: Presenters

Andrea Alù (S’03, M’07, SM’12, F’14) is the Founding Director of the Photonics Initiative at the Advanced Science Research Center, City University of New York (CUNY ASRC). He is also the Einstein Professor of Physics at the CUNY Graduate Center, Professor of Electrical Engineering at the City College of New York, and Adjunct Professor and Senior Research Scientist at the University of Texas at Austin. He received the Laurea, MS and PhD degrees from the University of Roma Tre, Rome, Italy, respectively in 2001, 2003 and 2007. After performing postdoctoral research at the University of Pennsylvania, in 2009 he joined the faculty of the University of Texas at Austin, where he was the Temple Foundation Endowed Professor until 2018. In 2015 he was the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) Visiting Professor at the AMOLF Institute in the Netherlands.
He is the co-author of over 600 journal papers and 35 book chapters. He has organized and chaired various international symposia and conferences, including several of the Metamaterials conference series, and has been the technical program chair in several conferences, including the IEEE AP-S Symposium in 2016. His current research interests span over a broad range of areas, including metamaterials and plasmonics, electromangetics, optics and nanophotonics, acoustics, scattering, nanocircuits and nanostructures, miniaturized antennas and nanoantennas, RF antennas and circuits. He is currently an Associate Editor of Applied Physics Letters and serves on the Editorial Board of Physical Review B, Advanced Optical Materials, Laser and Photonics Reviews, New Journal of Physics, Roadmaps in Electromagnetics, EPJ Applied Metamaterials and ISTE Metamaterials. He served as Associate Editor for MDPI Materials, IEEE Antennas and Wireless Propagation Letters, Scientific Reports, Metamaterials, Advanced Electromagnetics, and Optics Express. He has guest edited special issues for the IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Quantum Electronics, Proceedings of IEEE (twice), IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation, IEEE Antennas and Wireless Propagation Letters (twice), Nanophotonics, Journal of Optics, Journal of the Optical Society of America A and B, Photonics and Nanostructures – Fundamentals and Applications, Optics Communications, Metamaterials, and Sensors on a variety of topics involving metamaterials, plasmonics, optics and electromagnetic theory.
Dr. Alù has been serving as the President of the Metamorphose Virtual Institute for Artificial Electromagnetic Materials and Metamaterials, as a member of the Administrative Committee of the IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society, as an OSA Traveling Lecturer since 2010, as an IEEE AP-S Distinguished Lecturer since 2014, and as the IEEE joint AP-S and MTT-S chapter for Central Texas. He is a Simons Investigator in Physics since 2016 and Director of the Simons Collaboration on Extreme Wave Phenomena since 2020. He is a full member of URSI, a Fellow of IEEE, NAI, AAAS, OSA, SPIE and APS, and a Highly Cited Researcher (Clarivate Web of Science) since 2017. Over the last few years, he has received several awards for his research activities, including the IEEE Kiyo Tomiyasu Award (2020), the DoD Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowship (2019), IUMRS Young Researcher Award (2018), ICO Prize in Optics (2016), the inaugural MDPI Materials Young Investigator Award (2016), the Kavli Foundation Early Career Lectureship in Materials Science (2016), the inaugural ACS Photonics Young Investigator Award Lectureship (2016), the Edith and Peter O’Donnell Award in Engineering (2016), the NSF Alan T. Waterman Award (2015), the IEEE MTT Outstanding Young Engineer Award (2014), the OSA Adolph Lomb Medal (2013), the IUPAP Young Scientist Prize in Optics (2013), the Franco Strazzabosco Award for Young Engineers (2013), the SPIE Early Career Investigator Award (2012), the URSI Issac Koga Gold Medal (2011), an NSF CAREER award (2010), the AFOSR and the DTRA Young Investigator Awards (2010, 2011), Young Scientist Awards from URSI General Assembly (2005) and URSI Commission B (2010, 2007 and 2004). His students have also received several awards, including student paper awards at IEEE Antennas and Propagation and URSI Symposia.

July 1978 Dipl.-Phys. degree, Technical University (TU) Darmstadt, Germany
1978–1979 Research Fellow, Collège Militaire Royal de Saint-Jean, Québec, Canada
1979–1980 Research Assistant, Deutsches Kunststoff-Institut (DKI) Darmstadt, Germany
1980–1985 Research Scientist, Institute of Electroacoustics, TU Darmstadt, Germany
Dec. 1984 Dr.-Ing. degree, Communications Engineering, TU Darmstadt (summa cum laude)
1985–1994 Senior Scientist & Project Manager, Department of Signal Processing and Display Equipment, Heinrich-Hertz Institute (HHI) for Telecommunications Berlin, Germany
Dec. 1992 Fellow of the IEEE (since 2018 Life Fellow)
1994–1997 Associate University Professor (C3) for Sensorics, University of Potsdam, Germany
since 1997 Full University Professor (C4) for Applied Condensed-Matter Physics, Institute of Physics and Astronomy, Faculty of Science, University of Potsdam, Germany
2004–2012 Chairman, M.Sc. program in Polymer Science, FU, HU and TU Berlin, and U Potsdam, Germany
2006–2012 Vice Dean (2006–2008) and Dean, Faculty of Science, University of Potsdam, Germany
Nov. 2011 Fellow / Life Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS)
2007/08, 2014–2021 Technical (2007/08, 2014/15) and Administrative (2016/17) VP, President (2018/19), and Past President (2020/21) of the IEEE Dielectrics and Electrical Insulation Society (DEIS)
1981ff. Visiting scientist/professor at: AT&T Bell Labs, NJ, USA; ENS Cachan/ESPCI Paris, France; USP São Carlos, Brazil; HUJI Jerusalem, Israel; XJTU Xi’an, China; U Chongqing, China; TU Berlin, Germany

Dr. Huang Currently serves as the Professor and Director of Ultrasound Department in The Second Affiliated Hospital of Zhejiang University School of Medicine, one of editorial board members of “Cancer Letters”, “Ultrasound in Medicine and Biology”, “Journal of Ultrasound”, “Journal of Clinical & Experimental Oncology”, and one of the Committee Board Member of ICUS. He received his PhD and MD from Xi’an Jiaotong University in China. He had published over 300 peer reviewed papers and several book chapters. His clinical interests involve in the application of contrast enhanced ultrasound, elastography and interventional ultrasound for the abdominal organ and superficial organ. He is a chairman of Westlake International Forum on Ultrasound in Medicine and Biology, which had been held annually since 2012, and more than 800 participants worldwide attended in this event each year. He had been invited to present over 300 scientific and educational presentations and lectures at domestic and international. He is the Principal Investigator on two registered clinical trials. He has relationships with multiple ultrasound vendors for the improvement of elastography and CEUS on their systems. He also is the leader/co-authors on several national and international guidelines on ultrasound contrast. He had moderated five grants from National Nature Science Foundation from China and hosted a National Key R&D project of China.

Hairong Zheng is a Professor and vice director of Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology (SIAT), Chinese Academy of Sciences. Dr. Zheng’s research focus on multi-function biomedical ultrasound and magnetic resonance imaging systems. He received his B.S. degree from Harbin Institute of Technology in 2000 and Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from University of Colorado at Boulder in 2006. He joined the University of California Davis first as a postdoctoral fellow, and then as project scientist in the Biomedical Engineering Department, before joining SIAT in late 2007.
Dr. Zheng has published more than 150 peer-reviewed journal papers and owns more than 90 patents. Dr. Zheng is a recipient of the National Outstanding Young Scientist Award of China (2013), National Leading Talents of Ten Thousand Plan (2016), the Ho Leung Ho Lee Foundation Young Scientist Award (2017), National Technological Invention Award (2017), and Qiu Shi Outstanding Young Scholar Award (2018). He is the principal investigator of the China 973 plan, a special fund of Scientific Instruments of NSFC. Dr. Zheng was an Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on UFFC, an editorial board member of Ultrasound in Medicine and Biology, and the chairman of the IEEE EMBS Shenzhen Chapter.

Marie Muller is an Associate Professor in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at North Carolina State University. She received her BS in Physics from the Pierre et Marie Curie University in Paris, France in 2002, and her Ph.D in Physical Acoustics from the University of Paris, France in 2006. After a postdoctorate at the Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, she returned to Paris, as an Assistant Professor with the Institut Langevin. In 2014, she moved to North Carolina and joined the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering department at NCSU. She is also an associate Faculty with the Joint Department of Biomedical Engineering at UNC and NCSU.

Richard J. Price, PhD, is Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Radiology & Medical Imaging at the University of Virginia. He is also Research Director of the UVa Focused Ultrasound Center. He has been studying ultrasound-targeted drug and gene delivery for ~20 years. He was amongst the first investigators to observe that interactions between contrast agent microbubbles and ultrasound can be used to open endothelial barriers for targeted nanoparticle delivery. Using these results as a platform, he determined how ultrasound parameters may be adjusted to optimize nanoparticle delivery, developed the approach as a means for stimulating collateral blood vessel growth in skeletal muscle, and demonstrated its utility as a means for achieving targeted skeletal muscle transfection. Within the past few years, he has begun transferring these concepts to brain applications. He has demonstrated that microbubble activation with focused ultrasound can be used to open the blood-brain barrier for effective “brain-penetrating” nanoparticle delivery. Recent studies entail using this approach to treat infiltrative gliomas and brain metastases, as well as for reversing neurodegeneration in Parkinson’s Disease. Dr. Price is also studying how focused ultrasound can synergize with various immunotherapeutic approaches, with his research in this area supporting clinical trials combining focused ultrasound with immunotherapy for multiple cancer indications (NCT03237572 and NCT04116320). Dr. Price has received the Andrew J. Lockhart Memorial Award for Focused Ultrasound Cancer Research, the Jorge Heller Award for Outstanding Original Research Paper in the Journal of Controlled Release, and the Gerritsen Award for most highly cited review article from the Microcirculatory Society. He is a Fellow of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering. He has served as Associate Editor of the journal Microcirculation, on the Executive Council of the Microcirculatory Society, and on the ISTU Board of Directors. He has served on numerous NIH study sections and as a member of the NHLBI Board of Counselors.

C.T. Chan received his PhD degree from the University of California at Berkeley in 1985. He is currently serving as the Associate Vice-President for Research & Development at HKUST. He is also concurrently the Daniel C K Yu Professor of Science. He has been elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society and Hong Kong Physical Society. He received the Achievement in Asia Award of the Overseas Chinese Physics Association (2000) and Croucher Senior Research Fellowship (2010). He is a co-recipient of Brillouin Medal for his research in phononic metamaterials (2013). His primary research interest is the theory and simulation of material properties.

Dr. Xu is currently an assistant professor at UC San Diego. He received his B.S. in Chemistry and Molecular Engineering from Peking University and Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology. He did his postdoctoral studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His group is interested in developing soft wearable electronics for health monitoring and human-machine interfaces. His research has been presented to the Congressmen and Congresswomen as testimony of NIH extramural research during a Congressional Hearing. He has been recognized by many awards, including NIH Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award, NIH Trailblazer Award, Wellcome Trust Innovator Award, 3M Nontenured Faculty Award, Nokia Bell Labs Prize, MIT TR 35, SPIE Rising Researchers, IEEE Sensor Council Technical Achievement Award, and MRS Outstanding Young Investigator Award (one of the 33 recipients of this award since its inception in 1991). He is a Kavli Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences and a Frontier of Engineering of the National Academy of Engineering. He serves Nano Research as a Young Star Editor.

Gengkai Hu is currently the Chair Professor of solid mechanics at Beijing Institute of Technology (BIT). He received his Ph.D. in mechanics and materials from Ecole Centrale de Paris (France) in 1991 and spent two years at the same university as a postdoctoral research associate before joining BIT. He has written or coauthored more than 170 papers in refereed journals, and received the Award of National Outstanding Youth Scientist by National Natural Science Foundation of China in 2003, and National Outstanding Teacher Award in 2004. He and his research group led some of the early works on elastic metamaterials. His current research interests include: dynamic homogenization of composite materials, metamaterials for controlling elastic wave propagation.

Ken-ya Hashimoto received his B.S. and M.S. degrees in electrical engineering in 1978 and 1980, respectively, from Chiba University, Japan, and his Dr. Eng. degree from Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan, in 1989. In 1980, he joined Chiba University as a Research Associate, and was now a Professor of the University. In 2021, he retired Chiba University and joined the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, China. He also became Professor Emeritus of Chiba University. He has/had Visiting Professorship in various Universities and academic institutions, such as Helsinki University of Technology, University of Linz, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, and Shanghai Jiatong University. He is IEEE Fellow, and received the Distinguished Lecturer Award from IEEE UFFC Society and IEEE fellow both in 2005, the Ichimura Industrial Award from the New Technology Development Foundation in 2015, the Commendation for Science and Technology by the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology for Research in 2018, and the Distinguished Service Award from IEEE UFFC Society in 2019. His current research interests include development of high-performance acoustic wave devices.