October 20, 2008

Kent State hosting Negative Index Materials MURI Program Review and Workshop

From Oct. 20-22, Kent State University will host a review of three Multi-University Research Initiative (MURI) Programs on Negative Index Materials in the Kent State University Student Center Ballroom. Over 90 researchers from over 25 universities and 11 national laboratories (government and private) are participating.

Led by Charles Lee, program manager, Air Force Office of Scientific Research, the committee will review the work of three different research groups (MURIs) that have taken different approaches to discovering new materials that exhibit a negative index of refraction. On Tuesday, October 21, the Review participants will tour the Liquid Crystal and Materials Sciences Building (home of the Glenn H. Brown Liquid Crystal Institute at KSU) from 5:45 – 6:45 p.m.

On Thursday, October 23, a Metamaterials Design Workshop, organized by Dr. Ruth Pachter (Air Force Research Laboratory, WPAFB) will be held. The focus of the workshop is on numerical methods for electromagnetics modeling, and discussion on issues and limitations.

Background
In 2006, Kent State researchers, led by KSU Chemical Physics Professor Peter Palffy-Muhoray, principal investigator of KSU’s MURI, along with a team of scientists from Wake Forest University, University of Michigan, New York University (Courant Institute), University of California-San Diego, Iowa State University and University of Central Florida (CREOL), were awarded a $5.5 million Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research to study “Self-Assembled Soft Optical Negative Index Materials.”

More information is available online: http://muri.lci.kent.edu/Review_meeting/registration_main.htm

Previous KSU e-Inside article about KSU’s MURI
http://einside.kent.edu/?type=art&id=6117&