Dr David Powell

I am a Senior Lecturer at the School of Engineering and Information Technology, UNSW Canberra. I work on metamaterials, structured materials with unusual electromagnetic properties. I have expertise in microwave, acoustic and terahertz experiments, particularly in the field of nonlinear and tunable metamaterials. I am a member of the Advanced Electromagnetics group.

Research Projects and PhD supervision

Enquiries are welcome from potential PhD candidates who are interested in conducting research in the following areas:

• Microwave and millimeter wave metasurfaces
• Acoustic and elastic wave metamaterials, including experimental design and characterisation
• Modelling of fundamental physical phenomena in open electromagnetic and acoustic resonators (known as quasi-normal modes, resonant state expansion, or singularity expansion method)
• Tunable, reconfigurable, nonlinear and time-varying metamaterials

While specific expertise in these areas is not required, a solid background in electromagnetic or acoustic waves is essential. Projects can involve theory, experiment, and/or numerical simulation.

To be admitted to a UNSW PhD you must meet the formal entry requirements. UNSW has an online tool that can help you to work out whether you are eligible for admission.

Strong candidates should be eligible for one of the scholarship schemes available from UNSW Canberra

Publications and Profile

My Google Scholar Profile contains the most up to date list of all my research publications

Background

I obtained my PhD from RMIT University in 2006, in the field of surface acoustic wave biosensors. From 2006-2017 I was a Researcher with the Nonlinear Physics Centre of the Australian National University, where I conducted research on fundamental and applied aspects of metamaterials, operating in the microwave, terahertz, infra-red and acoustic domains. Since 2017 I have been a Senior Lecturer at the School of Engineering and Information Technology, UNSW Canberra.

My research has demonstrated several new forms of nonlinear metamaterials, and a number of unique tuning mechanisms for reconfiguration of metamaterial functionality. A strong area of interest is metamaterials which combine electromagnetic and mechanical degrees of freedom to yield new coupled dynamics. I have made theoretical contributions to the phenomena of bianisotropy and chirality. I have contributed to the understanding modes in open resonant systems such as metamaterials, having released an open-source code called OpenModes, for finding the modes of open electromagnetic structures with strong radiation losses.

Keywords

Metamaterials, electromagnetism, nanophotonics, computational electromagnetics, microwaves, millimetre waves, acoustics, nonlinear, tunable, active structures