Dr Francisco Rodríguez Fortuño

Novel Nanophotonic Phenomena Team - Research group website: members, publications and news.

Biography 

Francisco José Rodríguez-Fortuño is a Lecturer at King's College London, where he carries out research on the topics of plasmonic devices, nano-optics, optical forces, optical nanoantennas, metamaterials and novel electromagnetic phenomena. After obtaining a degree in Telecommunications Engineering in 2008 at the Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV), Spain, he carried out his Masters' and PhD studies at UPV in the topic of plasmonic metamaterials. During his PhD, Francisco spent 9 months as a visiting researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, USA, 2011 under the supervision of Prof. Nader Engheta and 7 months at King's College London, UK, 2012, under the supervision of Prof. Anatoly Zayats and Dr. Gregory Wurtz, where he later worked as a Postdoctoral Research Assistant in 2014 and obtained a Lecturer position in 2015. Francisco has authored or co-authored 25 research papers and contributed 38 works at international conferences. He has received several academic performance distinctions and several prizes for his PhD work. Francisco is a member of the editorial board of Scientific Reports, Nature Publishing Group.

Research

Francisco is fascinated by novel and exotic optical phenomena at the nanoscale. His research career had its foundations on optical metamaterials and plasmonics at infrared and visible wavelengths, with both theoretical and experimental works in nanofabricated negative refractive index materials, and plasmonic sensing. 

Francisco's research evolved into studying extreme optical parameter metamaterials (permittivity-near-zero) and novel optical forces. Later, Francisco described an unknown fundamental effect linking optical helicity to directional excitation of electromagnetic modes, with a successful experimental demonstration, leading him to research on spin-orbit coupling of light and the subsequent experimental demonstration of polarization dependent silicon nanoantennas for infrared radiation polarization analysis and synthesis.

Currently, Francisco's research combines the topics of plasmonics, nanophotonics, extreme parameter metamaterials, hyperbolic metamaterials, spin-orbit coupling, optical nanoantennas, and optical forces, developing novel theoretical concepts in optics and plasmonics, and always aiming at their experimental demonstration and practical applications.