Francesco Monticone

Francesco Monticone

Associate Professor
Electrical and Computer Engineering
Phillips Hall, Room 312

Biography

Francesco Monticone is an Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Cornell University. He received the B.Sc. and M.Sc. (summa cum laude) degrees from Politecnico di Torino, Italy, in 2009 and 2011, respectively, and the Ph.D. degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from The University of Texas at Austin in 2016. Dr. Monticone joined the faculty of Cornell University in January 2017.

Dr. Monticone has authored and co-authored over 150 scientific contributions in peer-reviewed journal papers, book chapters, and conference proceedings, and has given over 50 invited talks and seminars. Over the past few years, Dr. Monticone has received several research and teaching awards, including the ONR Young Investigator Program Award (YIP) from the U.S. Department of the Navy, the AFOSR Young Investigator Program Award (YIP) from the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research, and the Michael Tien ’72 Sustained Excellence and Innovation in Engineering Education Award from Cornell University. Dr. Monticone is an Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation, the flagship publication of the IEEE AP-S society. He also regularly serves as a member of technical program committees and steering committees, as well as session chairman and session organizer, at top-tier conferences on photonics, electromagnetics, and metamaterials. Dr. Monticone is a member of the IEEE, the American Physical Society (APS), the Optical Society of America (OSA), The International Society for Optics and Photonics (SPIE) and has been elected a full member of the International Union of Radio Science (URSI). 

Research Interests

Dr. Monticone’s current research interests are in the areas of applied electromagnetics, metamaterials and metasurfaces, and theoretical/computational nanophotonics, with a focus on innovative and extreme aspects of wave interaction with engineered (meta)materials and the associated fundamental limits. His work is motivated both by fundamental scientific questions about wave-matter interactions and novel applications in a range of areas including information processing, communication, sensing and imaging, defense, and energy. Recent research topics range from passive radiative cooling and wireless energy transfer, to invisibility and stealth, one-way photonic transport, and metasurface-based flat optics.

Research Group Members

Teaching Interests

Dr. Monticone teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on intermediate and advanced electrodynamics, metamaterials, and nanophotonics. He has been teaching ECE 3030: Electromagnetic Fields and Waves for the past few years, and has established two new courses in the school's curriculum:

  • ECE 4380/AEP 4450/ECE 5380: Electromagnetic and Optical Metamaterials
  • ECE 5970: Molding Light Flow: Advanced Electrodynamics of Complex Media

Dr. Monticone received the Michael Tien’72 Sustained Excellence and Innovation in Engineering Education Award, the highest award for teaching in the College of Engineering.

Selected Publications

  • A. Chen, and F. Monticone, “Dielectric Nonlocal Metasurfaces for Fully Solid-State Ultrathin Optical Systems,” ACS Photonics 8, 5, 1439–1447 (2021).
  • Z. Hayran, A. Chen, F. Monticone, “Spectral Causality and the Scattering of Waves,” Optica 8, 1040-1049 (2021).
  • H. Shim, F. Monticone, and O. D. Miller, “Fundamental limits to the refractive index of transparent optical materials,” Advanced Materials 33, 43, 2103946 (2021).
  • F. Monticone, “A Truly One-Way Lane for Surface Plasmon-Polaritons,” Nature Photonics 14, 461-465 (2020).
  • F. Presutti and F. Monticone, “Focusing on bandwidth: achromatic metalens limits,” Optica 7, 624–631 (2020).
  • S. A. H. Gangaraj, and F. Monticone, “Physical Violations of the Bulk-Edge Correspondence in Topological Electromagnetics,” Phys. Rev. Lett. 124, 15, 153901 (2020).

Selected Awards and Honors

  • Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award 2022
  • Franco Strazzabosco Award for Research in Engineering (ISSNAF) 2021
  • Michael Tien '72 Teaching Award (Cornell University College of Engineering) 2020
  • Leopold B. Felsen Award for Excellence in Electrodynamics (European Conference on Antennas and Propagation (EuCAP)) 2019
  • AFOSR Young Investigator Program Award (YIP) (US Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR)) 2018
  • Inaugural Margarida Jacome Dissertation Award (UT Austin, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering) 2017
  • Raj Mittra Travel Grant Award(IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society) 2017
  • Three times selected as "Editor's Suggestion" in Physical Review Letters (American Physical Society)
  • Best Paper Award, (Metamaterials congress) 2013

Education

  • B.S. (Electronics Engineering), Politecnico di Torino, 2009
  • M.S. (Electronics Engineering), Politecnico di Torino, 2011
  • Ph.D. (Electrical and Computer Engineering), The University of Texas at Austin, 2016

Websites

Research Group Members

Graduate Students

In the News