2023 McKnight Land-Grant Professorship Goes to Ognjen Ilic
ME Assistant Professor Ognjen Ilic has received a 2023 McKnight Land-Grand Professorship, a program designed to advance the careers of assistant professors at a crucial point in their professional lives.
Ilic's winning research, "Forces of Light: Optomechanics of Nanostructured Materials," studies the mechanics of how light interacts with materials to enable new technologies for contactless manipulation. He works at the intersection of optomechanics and wave physics to develop new nanostructured materials that can be actuated by light. Through their exotic optical and mechanical properties, these metamaterials are advancing existing applications of optical manipulation in science and engineering as well as enabling entirely new technologies ranging from fuel-free spacecraft to metamaterial robots and optomechanical sensors.