David R. Smith
James B. Duke Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Overview
Dr. David R. Smith is currently the James B. Duke Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at Duke University. He is also Director of the Center for Metamaterials and Integrated Plasmonics at Duke and holds the positions of Adjunct Associate Professor in the Physics Department at the University of California, San Diego, and Visiting Professor of Physics at Imperial College, London. Dr. Smith received his Ph.D. in 1994 in Physics from the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). Dr. Smith's research interests include the theory, simulation and characterization of unique electromagnetic structures, including photonic crystals and metamaterials.
Smith is best known for his theoretical and experimental work on electromagnetic metamaterials. Metamaterials are artificially structured materials, whose electromagnetic properties can be tailored and tuned in ways not easily accomplished with conventional materials. Smith has been at the forefront in the development of numerical methods to design and characterize metamaterials, and has also provided many of the key experiments that have helped to illustrate the potential that metamaterials offer. Smith and his colleagues at UCSD demonstrated the first left-handed (or negative index) metamaterial at microwave frequencies in 2000--a material that had been predicted theoretically more than thirty years prior by Russian physicist Victor Veselago. No naturally occurring material or compound with a negative index-of-refraction had ever been reported until this experiment. In 2001, Smith and colleagues followed up with a second experiment confirming one of Veselago's key conjectures: the 'reversal' of Snell's law. These two papers--the first published in Physical Review Letters and the second in Science--generated enormous interest throughout the community in the possibility of metamaterials to extend and augment the properties of conventional materials. Both papers have now been cited more than 3,000 times each.
Since those first metamaterial experiments, Smith has continued to study the fundamentals and potential applications of negative index media and metamaterials. In 2004, Smith began studying the potential of metamaterials as a means to produce novel gradient index media. By varying the index-of-refraction throughout a material, an entire class of optical elements (such as lenses) can be formed. Smith showed that metamaterials could access a much larger range of design space, since both the magnetic and the electric properties could be graded independently. Smith and colleagues demonstrated several versions of gradient index optics, an activity that continues in his lab today. The introduction of controlled spatial gradients in the electromagnetic properties of a metamaterial flows naturally into the broad concept of transformation optics - a new electromagnetic design approach proposed by Sir John Pendry in 2006. To illustrate of the novelty of this design approach, Pendry, Schurig and Smith suggested in 2006 that an 'invisibility cloak' could be realized by a metamaterial implementation of a transformation optical design. Later that same year, Smith's group at Duke University reported the demonstration of a transformation optical designed 'invisibility cloak' at microwave frequencies. The concept of transformation optics has since attracted the attention of the scientific community, and is now a rapidly emerging sub-discipline in the field.
Smith's work on transformation optics has been featured in nearly every major newspaper, including a cover story in USA Today, The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and many more. Smith and his work on cloaking have also been featured on television news programs inlcuding The Today Show, Countdown with Keith Olbermann, Fox News, CNN and MSNBC. Smith's work has also been highlighted in documentary programs on The History Channel, The Discovery Channel, The Science Channel, the BBC and others.
Please also see Prof. Smith's personal website at http://people.ee.duke.edu/~drsmith for the most frequent updates.
Top 50 Researchers. Scientific American. July 2008
Selected Grants
Next Generation Metamaterials and Metasurfaces for Novel Radio Frequency and Optical Devices awarded by Air Force Office of Scientific Research (Principal Investigator). 2018 to 2023
Multi-Aperture Passive Sonar Array Calibration using Ocean Ambient Noise awarded by Office of Naval Research (Principal Investigator). 2018 to 2021
Dynamically Reconfigurable, Conformal, Metasurface Apertures for Communications and Sensing Applications in Aerospace Platforms awarded by Air Force Office of Scientific Research (Principal Investigator). 2018 to 2020
Detecting Human Presence Using Dynamic Metasurface Anetennas awarded by Advanced Research Projects Agency - Energy (Principal Investigator). 2018 to 2020
Integration of Photovoltaic Panels with Dynamic Metasurface Antennas for Autonomous Devices awarded by Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Principal Investigator). 2019
The Information Content of Ocean Noise: Theory and Experiment awarded by University of California - San Diego (Principal Investigator). 2013 to 2019
Multipath Array Processing for Co-Prime and Under-Sampled Sensor Arrays awarded by Office of Naval Research (Principal Investigator). 2013 to 2018
Adapting Towed-Array Tilt for Passive Detection Gain Based on 3-D Noise Field Directionality Estimates awarded by Office of Naval Research (Principal Investigator). 2015 to 2018
Metamaterial Physical Layer Implementations of Advanced Computational and Compressive Imaging Schemes at Infrared Bands awarded by Air Force Office of Scientific Research (Principal Investigator). 2012 to 2017
Discrete Dipole Approximation as a robust technique for antenna design and metamaterial devices awarded by Kymeta Corporation (Principal Investigator). 2016 to 2017
Pages
Landy, N, Urzhumov, Y, and Smith, DR. "Quasi-conformal approaches for two and three-dimensional transformation optical media." Transformation Electromagnetics and Metamaterials: Fundamental Principles and Applications. July 1, 2014. 1-32. Full Text
Cui, TJ, Smith, DR, and Liu, R. "Preface." December 1, 2010. Full Text
Diebold, AV, Imani, MF, Sleasman, T, and Smith, DR. "Phaseless coherent and incoherent microwave ghost imaging with dynamic metasurface apertures." Optica 5.12 (December 20, 2018): 1529-1529. Full Text
Zeng, B, Huang, Z, Singh, A, Yao, Y, Azad, AK, Mohite, AD, Taylor, AJ, Smith, DR, and Chen, HT. "Hybrid graphene metasurfaces for high-speed mid-infrared light modulation and single-pixel imaging." Light: Science and Applications 7.1 (December 1, 2018). Full Text
Imani, MF, Sleasman, T, and Smith, DR. "Two-Dimensional Dynamic Metasurface Apertures for Computational Microwave Imaging." Ieee Antennas and Wireless Propagation Letters 17.12 (December 1, 2018): 2299-2303. Full Text
Marks, DL, and Smith, DR. "Motion compensation of the transmitter and receiver in bistatic frequency-modulated continuous-wave synthetic aperture radar." Iet Radar, Sonar and Navigation 12.11 (November 1, 2018): 1336-1345. Full Text
Kriete, DM, McKee, GR, Fonck, RJ, Smith, DR, Whelan, GG, and Yan, Z. "Extracting the turbulent flow-field from beam emission spectroscopy images using velocimetry." The Review of Scientific Instruments 89.10 (October 2018): 10E107-null. Full Text
Liu, X, Jia, X, Fischer, M, Huang, Z, and Smith, DR. "Enhanced Two-Photon Photochromism in Metasurface Perfect Absorbers." Nano Letters 18.10 (October 2018): 6181-6187. Full Text
Del Hougne, P, Imani, MF, Fink, M, Smith, DR, and Lerosey, G. "Precise Localization of Multiple Noncooperative Objects in a Disordered Cavity by Wave Front Shaping." Physical Review Letters 121.6 (August 2018): 063901-null. Full Text
Boyarsky, M, Sleasman, T, Pulido-Mancera, L, Diebold, AV, Imani, MF, and Smith, DR. "Single-frequency 3D synthetic aperture imaging with dynamic metasurface antennas." Applied Optics 57.15 (May 2018): 4123-4134. Full Text
Del Hougne, P, F Imani, M, Sleasman, T, Gollub, JN, Fink, M, Lerosey, G, and Smith, DR. "Dynamic Metasurface Aperture as Smart Around-the-Corner Motion Detector." Scientific Reports 8.1 (April 25, 2018): 6536-null. Full Text
Marks, DL, and Smith, DR. "Linear solutions to metamaterial volume hologram design using a variational approach." Journal of the Optical Society of America. A, Optics, Image Science, and Vision 35.4 (April 2018): 567-576. Full Text
Pages
Diebold, AV, Pulido-Mancera, L, Sleasman, T, Boyarsky, M, F. Imani, M, and Smith, DR. "Near-field SAR imaging with dynamic metasurface antennas using an adapted range migration algorithm." Computational Imaging III. April 15, 2018 - April 19, 2018.: SPIE, May 14, 2018. Full Text
Yurduseven, O, Marks, DL, Gollub, JN, and Smith, DR. "A reconfigurable millimeter-wave spotlight metasurface aperture integrated with a frequency-diverse microwave imager for security screening." January 1, 2018. Full Text
Boyarsky, M, Sleasman, T, Pulido-Mancera, L, Diebold, AV, Imani, MF, and Smith, DR. "Synthetic aperture radar imaging with reconfigurable 1d dynamic metasurface apertures." January 1, 2018.
Boyarsky, M, Sleasman, T, Pulido-Mancera, L, Diebold, AV, Imani, MF, and Smith, DR. "Aperture synthesis with a monochromatic metasurface imaging system for 3D near-field imaging." January 1, 2018. Full Text
Diebold, AV, Imani, MF, Sleasman, T, and Smith, DR. "Spatial intensity averaging for ghost imaging with a single-port dynamic metasurface aperture." January 1, 2018. Full Text
Diebold, AV, Imani, MF, Sleasman, T, and Smith, DR. "Reflective microwave ghost imaging with dynamic metasurface apertures." January 1, 2018. Full Text
Stewart, JW, Akselrod, GM, Smith, DR, and Mikkelsen, MH. "Multispectral metasurface absorbers for optoelectronic devices." October 25, 2017. Full Text
Fromenteze, T, Boyarsky, M, Yurduseven, O, Gollub, J, Marks, DL, and Smith, DR. "Computational polarimetric localization with a radiating metasurface." October 18, 2017. Full Text
Suthakar, U, Magnoni, L, Smith, DR, and Khan, A. "Optimised lambda architecture for monitoring wlcg using spark and spark streaming." October 16, 2017. Full Text
Klugmann, D, Rea, S, Moyna, B, Parow-Souchon, K, Henry, M, Wang, H, Oldfield, M, Brewster, N, Hunyor, P, Merritt, M, Green, R, Smith, D, Davis, B, Obeed, A, Phillips, M, Beardsley, M, Hampton, J, Ellison, B, Howe, C, Burton, G, Marshall, A, Thomas, B, Brandt, M, Philipp, M, Sonnabend, G, Stangier, T, Hammett, R, Decoopman, T, Kangas, V, D'Addio, S, and Piironen, P. "Millimetre wave front end receivers for the MWS and MWI instruments onboard MetOp-SG satellites." October 12, 2017. Full Text