Nader Engheta

Nader Engheta was born in 1955 in Tehran, Iran. He pursued his undergraduate education in Iran before emigrating to the United States, where he earned his PhD in electrical engineering from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). He joined the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania, where he became the H. Nedwill Ramsey Professor in the School of Engineering and Applied Science, building one of the world's leading groups in electromagnetic theory and photonics.

Engheta is best known for his foundational contributions to the science of metamaterials — artificially structured materials engineered to exhibit electromagnetic properties not found in nature, such as negative permittivity and negative permeability. His theoretical and experimental work demonstrated how metamaterials can be used to cloak objects, guide light at scales far below the wavelength limit, and create new forms of optical lensing.

Among his most celebrated contributions is the concept of optical nanocircuits: he proposed that optical lumped circuit elements such as nanoinductors, nanocapacitors, and nanoresistors could be realized using plasmonic and dielectric nanostructures at optical frequencies. This concept, introduced in a landmark 2007 paper in Physical Review Letters, opened an entirely new paradigm for optical information processing and nanoscale photonic engineering.

Engheta has received the IEEE Electromagnetics Award, the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Electrical Engineering, the Enrico Fermi Award, and the Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowship. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Inventors. His work continues to shape the frontiers of photonics, nanoelectronics, and engineered electromagnetic matter, with implications ranging from medical imaging to quantum computing.