The massacre committed by the Mullahs' regime in Iran against innocent people, according to TIME Magazine, “is believed to be one of the most intensive massacres of civilians by gunfire since the Second World War”. The level of savagery and brutality of this regime has no bounds. This is the link to TIME articles: time-magazine.visitlink.me/x…

Brave people of Iran, demonstrating in many large cities and small towns, are being massacred by the brutal and savage regime of the Mullahs in Iran. Reports of casualties from various sources have shown numbers from several hundreds to several thousands dead in the past 2-3 days, and the massacre continues. Since the Internet and phone communications are shut down in Iran, we in the free world should be their voice in their struggle to gain freedom.

Courageous people of Iran rising up: Since December 28, 2025, in Iran, the people from all walks of life have been protesting and demonstrating in many large cities and small towns, demanding an end to the much-hated regime of the Mullahs that has failed them over and over again for the past 47 years. Despite heavy-handed crackdowns by the government’s riot police and militia, the brave Iranians are continuing their protest and are voicing their hatred for the current regime and their desire for freedom, justice, and regime change. Internet access and phone communications have been shut down by the government, and this is an ominous sign that the regime will intensify its brutality and crackdown in the coming days. Those of us who live in free countries in the world should become the voice of the Iranians inside Iran. We stand in solidarity with the Iranian people in their struggle and desire for freedom, justice, and a democratic government in Iran.

Happy birthday to Professor Nader Engheta! 🥳 We celebrated this milestone birthday with a two-day workshop on metamaterials, joined by friends and colleagues from around the world. It was a wonderful occasion to honor his incredible contributions and celebrate together!

Many thanks to my friend, Dr. Dimitrios Tzarouchis, who has researched my academic genealogy and compiled this slide. The bottom row shows the physics branch of the academic tree, from Kirchhoff -> Lippmann -> Curie -> Langevin -> Brillouin -> Papas -> Engheta, and the top row shows the engineering branch, from Edison -> Fessenden -> Bennett -> King -> Papas -> Engheta. (One of my friends, Professor Francesco Monticone, brought to my attention that Reginald Fessenden also interacted with Nikola Tesla.)

I am grateful to three dear friends, Professor Andrea Alu, Professor Albert Polman, and Professor Pino Strangi, for organizing a wonderful workshop on Metamaterials at UPenn last week, on the occasion of my 70th birthday. Many friends, colleagues, collaborators, and some of the alumni from my group participated in this event, which included fascinating scientific talks and great friendship. I am thankful to all the participants. Special thanks to Andrea, Albert, Pino, Ms. Erin Dowling (the event and communication coordinator), and Ms. Danielle Kopicko (the director of our ESE department).

Our paper on Kapitza-inspired stabilization in electrical circuits was published in Physical Review Applied on August 8, 2025. In this work, inspired by Kapitza’s inverted pendulum problem, we explore how an analogous approach can be applied to non-Foster electrical circuits. In 1951, Nobel Laureate Pyotr Kapitza developed the mathematical basis and the theory behind the stabilization of an inverted pendulum that was being vibrated at its base with a high-frequency motion, launching the fields of vibrational mechanics and vibrational resonances. For more details, please see our paper: Antonio Alex-Amor, Grigorii Ptitcyn, and Nader Engheta, Physical Review Applied, 24, 024022 (2025) doi.org/10.1103/85sy-qbk6

Today marks 47 years since I came to the US. What a journey it has been so far and it will continue to be! I look forward to the coming years. Photos: (left): July 2025; (top right): January 1979; (bottom right): August 1978, a couple of weeks before I came to the US.

I am honored and humbled to be selected as a recipient of the 2025 Rolf Landauer Medal, which is given by the ETOPIM Association (The Elastic, Electrical, Transport, and Optical Properties of Inhomogeneous Media (ETOPIM) Association). This organization has been a forum for the exchange of ideas in various aspects of the science of complex media, dating back to 1977 with their first ETOPIM conference in Columbus, Ohio. Every three years, the medals are given to two recipients. This year, I was one of the recipients and received the medal on June 16, 2025, at the ETOPIM13 conference in New York City.

A very interesting piece of scientific history: James Clerk Maxwell’s original manuscript on “A dynamical theory of the electromagnetic field”, published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society on June 16, 1865. You also see the handwritten comments from the reviewer (Lord Kelvin) to the editor (George Stokes). In 2015, when I was at a meeting at the Royal Society in London, I saw these in the exhibit there, so with my camera, I took these pictures of these amazing historical items. Maxwell’s paper in the 19th century revolutionized our understanding of electricity, magnetism, and optics by unifying these three.

Our most recent work, published in Nature Communications. In this work, we presented an idea for “freezing”, amplifying, and then “thawing” electromagnetic waves using temporal non-Foster metastructures. For more details, please see: Victor Pacheco-Pena, Yasaman Kiasat, Diego M. Solis, Brian Edwards, and Nader Engheta, Nature Communications 16:2757, March 20, 2025, rdcu.be/eelKT

Happy Persian New Year! This year, the spring equinox happens at exactly 5:01 AM EDT, Thursday, March 20, 2025, and that is the Persian New Year, the beginning of spring. The special table for the Nowruz event, shown in these photos, is prepared by my wife, Susanne Engheta. This New Year event, which marks the beginning of the Persian calendar year (1404), is celebrated in Iran and other Farsi-speaking countries. Happy Nowruz to all!

A metastructure that designs metastructures: We have built this metastructure that can operate as a programmable wave-based analog computing machine, performing reconfigurable matrix inversion, root finding, and constrained optimization/inverse design. Our paper was published in Nature Communications on January 21, 2025. Many thanks to Dimitris Tzarouchis @Dimi_Tz and Brian Edwards. For details, please see: rdcu.be/d63Jb

The @632nmPodcast hosts interviewed me on September 21, 2024, covering various topics ranging from my research journey, my fascination with wave physics, scientific curiosity, optics and AI, and more. Check this link: youtu.be/yS2EHl4iH4c?t=59 Many thanks to the 632nm hosts, Dr. @MYShalaginov , Dr. @XinghuiYin, and Dr. @MikeDubrovsky for their great efforts and kind invitation to me for this interview. The video is around two hours long, but you can get to the different sections at the time stamps shown in the link above. 02:19 Fascination with Electromagnetics 03:14 Journey from Tehran to Caltech 05:39 Exploring Chirality and Metamaterials 08:21 Innovations in Polarization Imaging 36:12 Exploring Antennas and Metatronics 36:46 Dream Job in the Tech Industry 37:24 Optics and Artificial Intelligence 39:44 Brain Waves and Neuroscience 53:20 Optical Computing vs. Electronics 01:15:55 Exploring Optical and Electronic Constraints 01:17:47 Optical Computing: Efficiency and Challenges 01:20:58 Historical Insights and Modern Applications 01:26:20 Nonlinearity in Optical Systems 01:32:59 Future Directions and Advice for Young Researchers

Many thanks to Professor @RomainQuidant for this interview.

Our work has been selected for the cover of the Optics and Photonics News (OPN) in December 2024. This work, which is about vector-matrix multiplication at the speed of light, has been chosen by the OPN as one of the highlights and breakthroughs of optics in this past year. Many thanks to the coauthors Vahid Nikkhah, Ali Pirmoradi, Farshid Ashtiani, Brian Edwards, and Firooz Aflatouni. For details, please see optica-opn.org/home/articles… Cover illustration credit: @Ella_Maru (Ella Maru Studio)

Many thanks to my dear friend, @Prof_M_Hassan, for his kind invitation to me to give a colloquium in his department. I had a great chance to learn about his elegant and pioneering research on #attomicroscopy. Merging #metamaterials with #attomicroscopy will be very exciting.

Don't miss this exciting conversation between ACS Photonics Editor-in-Chief Romain Quidant (@RomainQuidant) and Nader Engheta (@NaderEngheta)! An Interview with Nader Engheta Read here ➡ go.acs.org/b36

Many thanks to Professor Romain Quidant of ETH Zurich, Editor-in-Chief of ACS Photonics, for this interview.

How time flies. It was 46 years ago today I came to the US.