Professor David R. Smith to lead the Metamaterials Commercialization Center at Intellectual Ventures

Professor David R. Smith, Director of the Center for Metamaterials and Integrated Plasmonics at Duke University, has announced that he will serve as Acting Director of the Metamaterials Commercialization Group at Intellectual Ventures (IV) in Bellevue, Washington, effective January 1, 2013. Dr. Smith will be responsible for the further development of technical resources and capabilities at IV that will enable and accelerate the transition of metamaterials-based products from the laboratory to the marketplace.

Dr. Smith has worked with IV as a Senior Inventor since 2006.  His lab at Duke University has also had a longstanding collaboration with IV’s Invention Science Fund, which is focused on the creation and commercialization of breakthrough technologies in a number of fields.  Dr. Smith has contributed numerous inventions to IV’s extensive and world-leading metamaterials intellectual property portfolio. Recently, metamaterials inventions from Dr. Smith’s lab have played a fundamental role in the development of a satellite communications antenna that is being commercialized by Kymeta Corporation, a startup company that was spun out of IV in August 2012.

It is expected that Dr. Smith will hire additional PhD-level staff to expand the existing development team at IV. In addition, IV plans to foster relationships with metamaterials researchers at universities and research institutions around the world, advancing emerging metamaterials concepts toward commercial realization.

During this time, Dr. Smith will continue to serve as Director for the Center for Metamaterials and Integrated Plasmonics at Duke University, where he manages several key ongoing metamaterial research efforts.

Brief Biography, Prof. David R. Smith

Dr. David R. Smith is currently the William Bevan Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at Duke University and Director of the Center for Metamaterial and Integrated Plasmonics. He also holds the positions of Adjunct Associate Professor in the Physics Department at the University of California, San Diego, and Visiting Professor of Physics at Imperial College, London. Dr. Smith received his Ph.D. in 1994 in Physics from the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). Dr. Smith's research interests include the theory, simulation and characterization of unique electromagnetic structures, including photonic crystals and metamaterials.

Smith and his colleagues at UCSD demonstrated the first left-handed (or negative index) metamaterial at microwave frequencies in 2000. In 2001, Smith and colleagues followed up with a second experiment confirming one of Veselago's key conjectures: the 'reversal' of Snell's law. These two papers--the first published in Physical Review Letters and the second in Science--generated enormous interest throughout the community in the possibility of metamaterials to extend and augment the properties of conventional materials. Both papers have now been cited nearly 3,000 times each. Smith has more than 200 publications on metamaterials and plasmonics, and was selected by ISI-Reuters as a “Citation Laureate” in 2009 for the most number of “highly cited” papers in the field of Physics over the past decade. Smith’s first paper on negative index has been selected as one of four “PRL Milestones” for 2000 by the editors of Physical Review Letters (2008).

In 2002, Smith was elected a member of The Electromagnetics Academy. In 2005, Smith was part of a five member team that received the Descartes Research Prize, awarded by the European Union, for their contributions to metamaterials and other novel electromagnetic materials. Smith also received in 2005 the Stansell Research Award from the Pratt School of Engineering at Duke University. In 2006, Dr. Smith was selected as one of the "Scientific American 50," a group recognized by the editors of Scientific American for achievements in science, technology and policy. Dr. Smith's work has twice appeared on the cover of Physics Today, and twice been selected as one of the "Top Ten Breakthroughs" of the year by Science Magazine. In 2012, it was announced that Smith is a co-recipient of the James C. McGroddy Prize for New Materials, awarded by the American Physical Society.