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Team Led by Professor Edl Schamiloglu Awarded Prestigious MURI Grant

June 12, 2012

Edl Schamiloglu, professor in the UNM Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE), is leading a team of multiuniversity researchers that recently received a highly selective Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) award from the Department of Defense.

His team prepared a successful 5-year, $7.5 M bid entitledInnovative use of Metamaterials in Confining, Controlling, and Radiating Intense Microwave Pulses.  The team includes Prof. Christos Christodoulou and Prof. Mark Gilmore of UNM ECE; Prof. Rick Temkin (MIT), Prof. John Volakis (Ohio State University), Prof. Alex Figotin (UC Irvine) and Prof. Robert Lipton (Louisiana State University). 

This is Professor Schamiloglu’s third MURI award, and the second on which he is the overall PI. 

"Congratulations to Dr. Schamiloglu and his team for receiving this highly competitive MURI award," says Luke Lester, ECE Department Chair. "The award recognizes his impressive research in high power sources and will allow this multi-institution research collaboration to make unique discoveries in how low-loss metamaterials can benefit the manipulation of intense microwave pulses."

The aim of the project is to study the interaction of electrons with novel dispersive structures made from metamaterials in order to develop novel sources of coherent electromagnetic radiation.

The challenges the team will face are in identifying metamaterial structures that have the dispersive characteristics that are useful, but at the same time are low loss and manufacturable.

The team includes two experimental groups that design and characterize sources, one group that has engineered passive metamaterials, and two mathematicians who can suggest novel structures and designs. “This balance between the experimentalists and theorists was likely a key element to our success,” says Schamiloglu.

Schamiloglu’s group will lend their expertise in studying high power sources of coherent electromagnetic radiation for 25 years.

In addition to the MURI award, Schamiloglu was awarded his 6th DURIP (Defense University Research Instrumentation Program) grant, which will allow him to purchase equipment for his laboratory.