JULY 4, 2024 • By Matthew Tierney
ECE professor George Eleftheriades has been awarded the 2025 IEEE Electromagnetics Award, which is based on outstanding contributions to electromagnetics in theory, application or education. He was cited “for contributions to engineered surfaces and metasurfaces with application to antennas, cloaking, and sub-diffraction imaging.”
IEEE is the world’s largest technical professional organization, whose mission is to advance technology for humanity. Eleftheriades’s award is considered the most significant IEEE recognition in the field of electromagnetics, sponsored by four societies within the organization: the IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society, the IEEE Microwave Theory and Techniques Society, the IEEE Electromagnetic Compatibility Society, and the IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society.
“Honestly, when I started my career, I would never have dreamed that I’d receive this award,” says Eleftheriades. “I’m humbled and honoured. This award is a reflection of the incredible support of the ECE department, which allowed me to develop my career to the best of my abilities.”
Eleftheriades is a pioneer in the areas of metamaterials and metasurfaces, which are materials engineered to exhibit strange properties not found in nature, specifically how they can manipulate electromagnetic waves such as light or microwaves.
Eleftheriades introduced the concept of using transmission lines to realize negative-index metamaterials. Together with his graduate students, he produced the first experimental demonstration of focusing beyond the diffraction limit with a Veselago-Pendry lens made from transmission-line metamaterials and several novel and practical antenna/microwave/optical devices.
More recently, he pioneered field-discontinuity metasurfaces, which are two-dimensional analogues of metamaterials. These metasurfaces can manipulate electromagnetic waves in unprecedented ways and have significant applications in 5G/6G wireless communications, subdiffraction imaging and low-scattering radar “cloaks.”
Previously, Eleftheriades has received the 2019 IEEE AP-S Distinguished Achievement Award, the 2015 IEEE AP-S John Kraus Antenna Award and the 2008 IEEE Kiyo Tomiyasu Technical Field Award. He is an IEEE Fellow, a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.
