Vladimir (Vlad) M. Shalaev is a Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer EngineeringPeople, School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Purdue University and Scientific Director for Nanophotonics at Birck Nanotechnology Center,Birck Nanotechnology Center Faculty Purdue University.
Education and career V. Shalaev earned a Master of Science Degree in physics (summa cum laude) in 1979 from Krasnoyarsk State University (Russia) and a PhD Degree in physics and mathematics in 1983 from the same university. Over the course of his career, Shalaev received a number of awards for his research in the fields of nanophotonics and metamaterials, and he is a Fellow of several of Professional Societies (see the Awards, honors, memberships section below). Prof. Shalaev (with his h-index of 132, as of January 2026, and 77,000 citations, in total, according to Google ScholarShalaev h-index and citations, Google Scholar) has nearly 1,000 publications in the field of science and technology, including 1 monograph and 2 co-authored books, 4 edited/co-edited books, 30 invited book chapters, and 50 USA patents.V. Shalaev's publication list He is ranked #29 in electronics and electrical engineering among the USA researchers and #50 worldwide, according to Research.com website.Research.com Scientists Rankings - Electronics and Eelectrical Engineering Prof. Shalaev is ranked #22 in the “optics” category out of ~ 80,000 entries in the Stanford list of top 2% world’s highest-cited scientists (career-long).Shalaev, Vladimir M. - TopResearchersList.com He is also recognized as Highly Cited Researcher (in physics) by the Web of Science Group for eight consecutive years, in 2017-2024.Vladimir M. Shalaev on WebOfScience.com
Research
Vladimir M. Shalaev is recognized for his pioneering studies on linear and nonlinear optics of random nanophotonic composites that had helped to mold the research area of composite optical media.2010 Willis E. Lamb Award for Laser Science and Quantum Optics He also contributed to the emergence of a new field of engineered, artificial materials - optical metamaterials.2010 Optical Society of America Max Born Award Currently, he studies new phenomena resulting from merging metamaterials and plasmonics with quantum nanophotonics.S. I. Bogdanov, A. Boltasseva, V. M. Shalaev, Overcoming quantum decoherence with plasmonics, Science, v. 364, no. 6440, pp. 532-533 (2019)
Optical metamaterials Optical metamaterials (MMs) are rationally designed composite nanostructured materials that exhibit unique electromagnetic properties drastically different from the properties of their constituent material components. Metamaterials offer remarkable tailorability of their electromagnetic response via shape, size, composition and morphology of their nanoscale building blocks sometimes called 'meta-atoms'.N. Meinzer, W.L. Barnes & I.R. Hooper, Plasmonic meta-atoms and metasurfaces, N. Meinzer, William L. Barnes & I.R. Hooper, Nature Photonics, v. 8, pp. 889–898 (2014) Shalaev proposed and demonstrated the first optical MM that exhibits negative index of refraction and the nanostructures that show artificial magnetism across the entire visible spectrum.V.M. Shalaev, Optical Negative-Index Metamaterials, Nature photonics, v. 1, pp. 41–48 (2007)V.M. Shalaev, W. Cai, U.K. Chettiar, H.-K. Yuan, A.K. Sarychev, V.P. Drachev, and A.V. Kildishev, Negative Index of Refraction in Optical Metamaterials, Optics Letters, v. 30, pp. 3356–3358 (2005); arxiv.org/abs/physics/0504091 (April 13, 2005)W. Cai, V.M. Shalaev, Optical Metamaterials: Fundamentals and Applications, Springer-Verlag, New York (2010)W. Cai, U.K. Chettiar, H.-K. Yuan, V.C. de Silva, A.V. Kildishev, V.P. Drachev, and V.M. Shalaev, Metamagnetics with rainbow colors, Optics Express, v. 15, pp. 3333–3341 (2007) (Here and thereafter, only selected, representative papers by Shalaev are cited; for complete list of Shalaev's publications visit his website.Prof. V. Shalaev, Purdue University, Electrical & Computer Engineering) He made important contributions to active, nonlinear and tunable metamaterials, which enable new ways of controlling light and accessing new regimes of enhanced light–matter interactions.A.K. Popov and V.M. Shalaev, Negative-index metamaterials: second-harmonic generation, Manley-Rowe relations and parametric amplification, Applied Physics B, v. 84, pp. 131–37 (2006)S. Xiao, U.K. Chettiar, A.V. Kildishev, V.P. Drachev, I.C. Khoo, and V.M. Shalaev, Tunable magnetic response of metamaterials, Applied Physics Letters, v. 95, p. 033114 (2009)S. Xiao, V.P. Drachev, A.V. Kildishev, X. Ni, U.K. Chettiar, H.-K. Yuan, and V.M. Shalaev, Loss-free and active optical negative-index metamaterials, Nature, v. 466, pp. 735–738 (2010)O. Hess, J. B. Pendry, S. A. Maier, R. F. Oulton, J. M. Hamm and K. L. Tsakmakidis, Active nanoplasmonic metamaterials, Nature Materials, v. 11, pp. 573-584 (2012) Shalaev also experimentally realized negative-refractive-index MMs where optical gain medium is used to compensate for light absorption (optical loss). He made significant contributions to the so-called Transformation Optics,H. Chen, C. T. Chan and P. Sheng, Transformation optics and metamaterials, Nature Materials, v. 9, pp. 387–396 (2010) specifically on optical concentrators and "invisibility cloaks".W. Cai, U.K. Chettiar, A.V. Kildishev and V.M. Shalaev, Optical cloaking with metamaterials, Nature Photonics, v. 1, pp. 224-227 (2007)I.I. Smolyaninov, V.N. Smolyaninova, A.V. Kildishev, and V.M. Shalaev, Anisotropic Metamaterials Emulated by Tapered Waveguides: Application to Optical Cloaking, Physical Review Letters, v. 102, p. 213901 (2009)V.M. Shalaev, Transforming Light, Science, v. 322, pp. 384–386 (2008)A.V. Kildishev and V.M. Shalaev, Engineering space for light via transformation optics, Optics Letters, v. 33, pp. 43–45 (2008) In collaboration with Noginov, Shalaev demonstrated the smallest, 40-nm, nanolaser operating in the visible spectral range.M. A. Noginov, G. Zhu, A. M. Belgrave, R. Bakker, V. M. Shalaev, E. E. Narimanov, S. Stout, E. Herz, T. Suteewong and U. Wiesner, Demonstration of a spaser-based nanolaser, Nature, v. 460, pp.1110–1112 (2009)M. Premaratne and M.I. Stockman, Theory and Technology of SPASERs, Advances In Optics And Photonics, v. 9, pp. 79–128 (2017) Shalaev also made seminal contributions to two dimensional, flat metamaterials – metasurfacesN. Yu, and F. Capasso, Optical Metasurfaces and Prospect of Their Applications Including Fiber Optics, Journal Of Lightwave Technology, v. 33, pp.2344–2358 (2015) – that introduce abrupt changes to the phase of light at a single interface via coupling to nanoscale optical antennas.X. Ni, N. K. Emani, A.V. Kildishev, A. Boltasseva, and V.M. Shalaev, Broadband light bending with plasmonic nanoantennas, Science, v. 335, pp. 427 (2012)A. V. Kildishev, A. Boltasseva, and V. M. Shalaev, Planar photonics with metasurfaces, Science, v. 339, p. 1232009 (2013)X. Ni, S. Ishii, A.V. Kildishev, and V.M. Shalaev, Ultra-thin, planar, Babinet-inverted plasmonic metalenses, Light: Science & Applications, v. 2, p. e72 (2013)X. Ni, A.V. Kildishev, and V.M. Shalaev, Metasurface holograms for visible light, Nature Communications, v. 4, pp. 1–6 (2013)A. Shaltout, J. Liu, A. Kildishev, and V. Shalaev, Photonic spin Hall effect in gap-plasmon metasurfaces for on-chip chiroptical spectroscopy, Optica, v. 2, pp. 860-863 (2015) He realized extremely compact flat lens, ultra-thin hologram and record-small circular dichroism spectrometer compatible with planar optical circuitry. MM designs developed by Shalaev are now broadly employed for research in sub-wavelength optical imaging, nanoscale lasers, and novel sensors.C. Deeb, J.-L. Pelouard, Plasmon lasers: coherent nanoscopic light sources, Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics, v. 19, pp. 29731–29741 (2017)
Shalaev’s work had a strong impact on the whole field of metamaterials. Three of Shalaev’s papers - Refs. , , and - remain among the top 50 most-cited out of over 750,000 papers included in the ISI Web of Science OPTICS category since 2005 (as of January 2021).Web of Science Core Collection Search Results
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