Professor Andrea Alù of UT ECE has been named the 2012 recipient of the SPIE Early Career Achievement Award. The award recognizes Andrea’s “pioneering contributions to optical metamaterials and plasmonic phenomena”. The SPIE Early Career Achievement Award is given to an early career professional in recognition of significant and innovative technical contributions to any of the engineering or scientific fields of interests to SPIE.

SPIE is the international society for optics and photonics founded in 1955 to advance light-based technologies. Serving approximately 180,000 constituents from more than 170 countries, the Society advances emerging technologies through interdisciplinary information exchange, continuing education, publications, patent precedent, and career and professional growth.

Andrea Alù is an Assistant Professor in the Electrical & Computer Engineering department at The University of Texas at Austin. Over the last few years, he has won several international research awards, among which the prestigious URSI Issac Koga Gold Medal (2011), an NSF CAREER award (2010), the AFOSR Young Investigator Award (2010), the Leopold B. Felsen Award for Excellence in Electrodynamics (2008), the SUMMA Graduate Fellowship in Advanced Electromagnetics (2004), Young Scientist Awards from URSI General Assembly (2005) and URSI Commission B (2007 and 2004), IEEE AP-S Student Paper award (2003) and the Raj Mittra Travel Grant Award (2004). He serves as OSA Traveling Lecturer since 2010, as associate editor of Optics Express and IEEE Antennas and Wireless Propagation Letters, as a guest editor for several special issues in the areas of metamaterials and plasmomics.