Francesco Monticone Receives WNCG Student Leadership Award

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Published:
June 24, 2016

Each year, WNCG faculty nominate one outstanding student to receive the WNCG Student Leadership Award. The award is presented to a student based on their cumulative contributions to the center, including their representation of WNCG to the greater community, their mentorship of fellow students, their research visibility and recognition from external organizations.

This year, student Francesco Monticone won the prize. Monticone, who received a BS and MS in Electronics Engineering from Politechnico di Torino in Italy, is a member of Prof. Andrea Alù’s Metamaterials and Plasmonics Research Group. His research interests include applied electromagnetics, metamaterials, plasmonics and nanophotonics with applications ranging from microwaves to optical frequencies. His work has high scientific and industrial impact.

“Monticone had a stellar year, with several high-profile papers and three faculty offers from top universities before defending his PhD” his advisor, Prof. Alù states. “He has been a leader inside the lab, mentoring younger students and sometimes even postdoctoral researchers, and has given a lot of visibility to our group outside UT.”

Within the past year, Monticone has received the IEEE Photonics Society Graduate Student Fellowship, was a visiting researcher at the AMOLF Institute in The Netherlands, a sponsorship and exhibitor organizer for Metamaterials 2016, and was published in Science Advances, the IEEE Antennas and Propagation Magazine, and Optica. Starting in fall 2017, Monticone will join the faculty at Cornell University.

“We had a number of very impressive student nominees this year,” WNCG Associate Director Constantine Caramanis states. “We selected Monticone based on the glowing recommendation we received from his advisor.”