School wins share of £6 million centre for nanostructured photonic metamaterials
The School of Mathematics has won a share of a £6 million centre for nanostructured photonic metamaterials at the University of Southampton, funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).
Metamaterial is a manmade media with all sorts of unusual and useful functionalities. The grant will fund an innovative and interdisciplinary research programme over the next six years, with the aim of developing a new generation of switchable and active nanostructured photonic media and create a world-leading centre of research on Nanostructured Photonic Metamaterials at Southampton.
The programme is led by Professor Nikolay Zheludev, Deputy Director of the Optoelectronics Research Centre (ORC), and its multidisciplinary team of investigators includes Dr Janne Ruostekoski, from the Applied Mathematics group in the School of Mathematics. Janne will lead a team developing mathematical models of the behaviour of metamaterials.
The new grant is an important step for the Nano-portfolio partnership between EPRSC and the University that was formed in 2004.
Professor Zheludev says: "Over the last twenty years photonics and its dependence on new and improved photonic materials has played a key role in creating the world as we know it, with enormous worldwide beneficial social impact. Today it is impossible to imagine modern society without the globe-spanning broadband internet and mobile telephony made possible by the implementation of optical fibre core networks, optical disc data storage (underpinned by the development of compact semiconductor lasers), modern image display technologies, and laser-assisted manufacturing."
The new Mountbatten Building with its state-of-the-art cleanroom and laboratory complex will be essential to the programme.