Gururaj Naik, an ECE PhD student, received the Outstanding Graduate Student Research Award 2013 from the College of Engineering. Gururaj and 10 other graduate students, each from different schools of engineering were recognized for their excellence in research at the Spring Graduate Student Awards luncheon held on April 9^th. Gururaj is the only recipient from the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering for the year 2013.

Gururaj works with Prof. Alexandra Boltasseva tackling one of the key challenges in the field of plasmonics and metamaterials: making low loss building-blocks. Currently, plasmonic and metamaterial devices suffer from poor performance arising from the undesirable properties of their metallic building-blocks. Gururaj’s research has shown ways that overcome these problems, and pave the way for plasmonic and metamaterial technologies.