Recent development in nanoscience, optical physics, and materials science and engineering has provided opportunities to construct structures with unprecedented attributes and characteristics in manipulating waves and fields. We have been exploring a series of phenomena related to the wave-matter interaction in platforms with extreme scenarios such as one-atom-thick optical structures based on graphene photonics, optical lumped nanocircuitry ("optical metatronics"), near-zero-index photonics, photonic doping, geometry-independent resonant structures, nonreciprocal vortices at subwavelength scales, optical information processing and computing with waves in specialized materials, and more. I will discuss some of our ongoing work in these areas, will present some of the opportunities and challenges, and will forecast some future directions and possibilities.

Nader Engheta is the H.Nedwill Ramsey Professor at the University of Pennsylvania. He received his PhD from Caltech. His current research activities span various areas of nanophotonics, metamaterials, nano-optics, electrodynamics, graphene optics, optical circuits, imaging and sensing inspired by eyes of animal species, and physics and engineering of light-matter interaction. His most recent awards include William Streifer Scientific Achievement Award, SPIE Gold Medal, Fellow of US National Academy of Inventors, Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellow Award, IEEEEl ectromagnetics Award, and URSI Balthasa rvan der Pol Gold Medal. He is a Fellow of OSA, APS, MRS, SPIE, IEEE, URSI, andAAAS.