Andrea Alù Named Blavatnik National Awards Laureate

photonics initiative director Andrea AluProfessor Andrea Alù, founding director of the Photonics Initiative at the Advanced Science Research Center at the Graduate Center, CUNY (CUNY ASRC) and Einstein Professor of Physics at the Graduate Center, has been named the 2021 Blavatnik National Awards Laureate in Physical Sciences and Engineering.

The Blavatnik National Awards, given annually by the Blavatnik Family Foundation and administered by the New York Academy of Sciences, honor early-career scientists and engineers who have made trailblazing discoveries in their fields. Alù and two other laureates were selected from 298 nominations by 157 institutions across the U.S. Each laureate will receive $250,000, the world’s largest unrestricted prize for early-career scientists and engineers.

The award recognizes Alù’s challenges to the boundaries of materials science and physics, which have brought about advances in electromagnetics, nano-optics, and acoustics. His efforts are leading to new and enhanced technologies with potential applications in areas such as cellular communications, energy harvesting, radar cloaking, and biomedical sensing and imaging.

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