People

Prof. Jason Valentine

Professor of Mechanical Engineering (primary)

Professor of Electrical Engineering (secondary)

Deputy Director, Vanderbilt Institute of Nanoscale Science and Engineering

Director of Graduate Studies, Mechanical Engineering

Liason to Oak Ridge National Laboratory

Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN

 

Professor Valentine received a B.S. in mechanical engineering from Purdue University in 2004 and a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from UC Berkeley in 2010. In 2010 he joined the faculty in the Mechanical Engineering Department at Vanderbilt University where he is currently a Professor.

 

Prof. Valentine's past and current work includes the development of bulk plasmonic optical metamaterials, transformation inspired devices such as optical cloaks, dielectric metamaterials at optical frequencies, and hot electron devices. His work was selected by Time Magazine as one of the "Top 10 Scientific Discoveries in 2008". At Vanderbilt he has received an NSF CAREER Award and the Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award for research on dielectric metamaterials. Curriculum Vitae

Xiaomeng Zhang

Xiaomeng is a postdoctoral research scholar in the group. She received her bachelor’s degree in Optoelectronics Engineering in 2016 from the Beijing Institute of Technology in China and her Ph.D. degree in Optical Engineering in 2022 from Tsinghua University in China. Xiaomeng is currently working on phase-change metasurfaces.

Chibuzor Fabian Ugwu

Fabian is a Ph.D. student in the Mechanical Engineering Department. He received his bachelor's degree in Physics from Fisk University and a bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering from Vanderbilt University, in 2017. Fabian is currently working on active metamaterial devices.

Elena Kovalik

Elena is a PhD student in the Interdisciplinary Materials Science program. She received her bachelor’s degree in Physics in 2018 from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Elena Is currently working on electrochemically modulated dynamic metamaterials

Tao Hong

Tao is a PhD student in the Interdisciplinary Materials Science program. He received his bachelor’s degree in Material Science and Engineering in 2019 from Cornell University. Tao Is currently working on developing a platform integrated between metasurface and microfluidics for next-generation flow cytometry.