Short Bio

Michele Cotrufo joined the Institute of Optics in 2023 as an assistant professor. He received a BS degree in physics from University of Bari, Italy (2010) and MS degree in physics from University of Padova, Italy (2012). He then joined the Eindhoven University of Technology (Netherlands) as a doctoral student, where he investigated novel light-matter interactions in nanophotonics and hybrid optomechanical systems. After graduating in 2017, he performed postdoctoral research at the University of Texas at Austin and at the CUNY Advanced Science Research Center (New York City). In 2023, he was awarded the Photonics Young Investigator Award from MDPI.

Research Overview

Professor Cotrufo’s research focuses on the investigation of metamaterials—artificially structured materials that manifest optical properties not available in bulk materials—for a broad range of applications in classical and quantum optics. His group is particularly interested in exploring, theoretically and experimentally, the use of quantum metamaterials for the generation, manipulation, and detection of quantum states of light.

Research Interests

• Optical metasurfaces
• Quantum metamaterials
• Quantum optics

Selected Publications

• Cotrufo, A. Cordaro, D. L. Sounas, A. Polman, and A. Alù, “Passive Bias-Free Nonreciprocal Metasurfaces Based on Nonlinear Quasi-Bound States in the Continuum”, Nature Photonics, 2023 (link).
• Cotrufo, A. Arora, S. Singh, and A. Alù, “Dispersion Engineered Metasurfaces for Broadband, High-NA, High-Efficiency, Dual-Polarization Analog Image Processing”, Nature Communications, 14, 7078, 2023 (link).
• Cotrufo, S.B. Sulejman, L. Wesemann, M. A. Rahman, M. Bhaskaran, A. Roberts, and A Alù, “Reconfigurable Image Processing Metasurfaces with Phase-Change Materials”, arXiv preprint arXiv:2311.13109, 2023 (link).
• Cotrufo, S. Singh, A. Arora, A. Majewski, and A. Alù, "Polarization imaging and edge detection with image-processing metasurfaces," Optica 10, 1331-1338, 2023 (link).
• Nefedkin, M. Cotrufo, and A. Alù, “Nonreciprocal total cross section of quantum metasurfaces,” Nanophotonics, 12.3, 589-606, 2023 (link).
• Y. Yang, J. Skarda, M. Cotrufo, A. Dutt, G. H. Ahn, M. Sawaby, D. Vercruysse, A. Arbabian, S. Fan, A. Alù, et al., “Inverse-designed non-reciprocal pulse router for chip-based LiDAR,” Nature Photonics, pp. 1–6, 2020 (link).
• Cotrufo and A. Alù, “Excitation of Single-Photon Embedded Eigenstates in Coupled Cavity–Atom Systems,” Optica, vol. 6, no. 6, pp. 799–804, 2019 (link).
• Cotrufo, A. Fiore, and E. Verhagen, “Coherent Atom-Phonon Interaction through Mode Field Coupling in Hybrid Optomechanical Systems,” Physical Review Letters, vol. 118, no. 13, p. 133 603, 2017 (link).

Teaching

• OPT 201: Geometrical Optics
• OPT 412: Quantum Mechanics - Optics