Schamiloglu Presents Lectures as Visiting Scholar in China

Edl Schamiloglu work­ing with stu­dents at Tsinghua University.

UNM Gardner-Zemke Pro­fes­sor of Elec­tri­cal and Com­puter Engi­neer­ing Edl Schamiloglu recently returned from pre­sent­ing a series of lec­tures at Tsinghua Uni­ver­sity in China. Schamiloglu is an inter­na­tion­ally known scholar in the area of applied elec­tro­mag­net­ics and was invited to speak by a col­league, Pro­fes­sor Meng Cui, from the Inter­na­tional Elec­trotech­ni­cal Commission. Cui is a mem­ber of the Chi­nese del­e­ga­tion as well as a fac­ulty mem­ber at Tsinghua Uni­ver­sityand Schamiloglu is a mem­ber and tech­ni­cal advi­sor on the U.S. delegation.

Tsinghua Uni­ver­sity is some­times described as the M.I.T. of China. Schamiloglu says he was impressed by the stu­dents who had read the research mate­ri­als he pro­vided in advance of the lec­tures and were pre­pared to par­tic­i­pate in the dis­cus­sions.  Schamiloglu pre­sented a series of three half-day lec­tures and was able to com­bine sight­see­ing in Bei­jing with his aca­d­e­mic work.

His lec­tures on high power elec­tro­mag­net­ics, on wave chaos and the ran­dom cou­pling model and on plasma diag­nos­tics were well received and the lec­ture of plasma diag­nos­tics was attended by rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the Chi­nese Acad­emy of Sci­ences who were inter­ested in mak­ing plas­mas for med­ical applications.

Schamiloglu says his work con­sists of basic research and is unclas­si­fied.  He is lead researcher on a five year seven and one half mil­lion dol­lar Mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary Uni­ver­sity Research Ini­tia­tive (MURI) grant that has recently been awarded by the Depart­ment of Defense.  UNM is the lead insti­tu­ion and is part­ner­ing with M.I.T., Ohio State, UC Irvine and Louisiana State Uni­ver­sity.  The research into sources of elec­tro­mag­netic energy will inves­ti­gate the use of meta-materials to develop new sources of coher­ent elec­tro­mag­netic radiation.

Edl Schamiloglu at Great Wall in China.

Schamiloglu says this research is inter­est­ing because they will make sources of coher­ent elec­tro­mag­netic energy in struc­tures that do not exist in nature.  Meta mate­ri­als have peri­od­ic­ity that is very very small com­pared to the wave­length and may allow them to design new types of inter­ac­tions between elec­trons and elec­tro­mag­netic waves to make elec­tro­mag­netic energy in new ways. “We’re in the busi­ness of basi­cally push­ing the enve­lope,” says Schamiloglu.  “This is a basic research pro­gram which means all our research can be pub­lished and there are no restric­tions on students.”

There are 15 peo­ple in Schamiloglu’s research group.  He has 11 grad­u­ate stu­dents, most of whom are seek­ing a Ph.D.  He also has four research pro­fes­sors and a num­ber of under­grad­u­ate students.

Long term appli­ca­tions for this research could include cloud pen­e­trat­ing radar.  That might be used to cre­ate short pulse radars that could allow detec­tion of low-flying air­craft.  That is some­thing that tra­di­tional radars can­not do.  Schamiloglu says there are also pos­si­ble appli­ca­tions for use in par­ti­cle accelerators.

Media con­tact: Karen Went­worth (505) 277‑5627; kwent2@unm.edu