Professor Yuri Kivshar has been awarded a prestigious medal by Optica (formerly OSA), one of the top international optics and photonics bodies.

The honour, the Max Born Award, recognizes outstanding contributions to physical optics, theoretical or experimental. Professor Kivshar received the award in recognition of his pioneering research in nonlinear metamaterials and all-dielectric resonant metaphotonics.

Professor Kivshar said he was honoured to receive one of the Optica’s top medals, which puts him in the company of Nobel Laureates such as Roy Glauber and John Hall.

“It was not very much expected, the competition is extremely high,” he said.

In his work Professor Kivshar has studied materials built from tiny structures, which show extraordinary behaviour when they interact with radiation with longer wavelengths that the period of the structures. With these studies he has derived unique optical functionalities from electric and magnetic dipolar and multipolar Mie-type resonances that underpin new discoveries in nonlinear and topological nanophotonics.

Some examples of recent work from Professor Kivshar’s group are covered in these stories: Tiny lasers, like inside-out noise-cancelling headphones, Unleashing the superpowers of materials with the flash of a laser and A tiny can of light at the heart of tomorrow’s technology.

Yuri Kivshar received his PhD degree in Kharkov, Ukraine. He was a Humboldt Fellow at the University of Duesseldorf, Germany, and served as a visiting fellow at several research centers and universities in the US and Europe. In 1993, Kivshar moved to Australia where he established the Nonlinear Physics Centre at the Australian National University.

He is a world leader in photonics and metamaterials, who is recognized for his seminal contributions to the study of nonlinear and topological phenomena in light-matter interaction. He is one of the founders of all-dielectric resonant metaphotonics governed by the physics of Mie resonances in dielectric nanoparticles with high refractive index. His innovative ideas and high-impact, influential papers are driving several research fields.

He is currently a Deputy Editor of Photonics Research and has served on several Optica committees. He is a Fellow of Optica, the American Physical Society, the Australian Academy of Science, the Institute of Physics and SPIE. His research has garnered many national and international awards, including International Stephanos Pnevmatikos Award, Lyle Medal, Lebedev Medal, The State Prize of the Ukraine in Science and Technology, Harrie Massey Medal, Humboldt Research Award and SPIE Mozi Award.

Established by Optica in 1982, the Born Award recognizes outstanding contributions to physical optics, theoretical or experimental. It honours Max Born, who made distinguished contributions to physics in general and optics in particular. The award is endowed by the United Technologies Research Center, Physical Optics Corporation, and individuals including Joseph Goodman.