The second Exeter Microwave Metamaterials Meeting was held in Reed Hall just before Christmas. Organised by Dr Ben Tremain and Prof Alastair Hibbins, around 50 delegates from industry and academia, across the UK and Europe, took part in this collaborative workshop. The first day focussed on research presentations from PhD students and Early Career Researchers, and included talks on glide-symmetric metasurfaces (Ebrahimpuri, KTH, Sweeden), the conversion of propagating waves into surface waves (Tcvetkova, Aalto, Finland), leaky-wave devices (Martinez-Ros, Seville, Spain) and photonic topological materials (Yang, Birmingham, UK). There were also talks from XM2 post graduate researchers Lauren Barr, Miguel Camacho and Yulia Dautova. The delegates were rewarded with a drinks reception and three-course meal in the evening, providing an opportunity for networking with senior academics and industry leaders.
Our industrial colleagues took centre stage on Tuesday morning, with talks from Flann Microwave, Johnson Matthey, MBDA, Plextek, QinetiQ, NPL and Metaboards, covering wide ranging topics including material fabrication, defence applications, measurement facilities, antennas and wireless power transfer. The workshop finished with presentations from senior academics from Queen Mary, Navarra (Spain), Birmingham and Sheffield, and included Dr Darren Cadman from Loughborough, talking about the EPSRC Grand Challeng
e ‘SYMETA’ (involving Exeter) and Exeter’s own Dr Feodor Ogrin who discussed his group’s work towards magnetically tuneable microwave devices.
Throughout the meeting, research posters were on display, and these were judged by Dr Simon Berry and Dr Chris Preddy from QinetiQ. Exeter researcher Lauren Barr won the best poster prize!
This workshop forms part of an series of XM2-sponsored discussion meetings, which included an infrared sensing and imaging workshop in November, and will continue with the Exeter Acoustic MetaMaterials Meeting (XAM3) on 16th and 17th April 2018.