Rate My Professor Alastair Hibbins

Professor Alastair Hibbins is Professor in Metamaterial Physics in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Exeter. He earned his BSc in Physics in 1996 and PhD in Physics in 2000 from the University of Exeter, with his doctoral research focusing on grating coupling of surface plasmon polaritons at visible and microwave frequencies. Following his PhD, he continued microwave studies of photonic structures within the same research group for four years. In October 2004, he was awarded a prestigious EPSRC Advanced Fellowship to model the electromagnetic response of, build, and characterize photonic microstructured devices at microwave frequencies. He was appointed Lecturer in Physics/Electromagnetics/Photonics/Plasmonics at the University of Exeter in April 2007 and has since progressed to his current professorial role, leading a growing team of research staff and students.

Professor Hibbins serves as Director of the University of Exeter's Centre for Metamaterials Research and Innovation (CMRI) and its associated doctoral training centre, Director of Business Engagement and Innovation for Physics and Astronomy and Natural Science, Deputy Head of Department, and Lead of the UK Metamaterials Network, which has over 800 members and received £2.5 million from EPSRC and funding from Dstl. He leads the EPSRC-funded Centre-to-Centre collaboration A-Meta and is Exeter lead for the EPSRC programme grant Meta-4D. His research centers on metamaterials, encompassing electromagnetic, acoustic, and elastic varieties, metasurfaces, plasmonics, and photonic structures, with applications in imaging, sensing, energy, and defence. He supervises multiple PhD projects and manages senior postdoctoral researchers, with much work funded by EPSRC, industry, and government. Professor Hibbins has authored over 200 publications, accumulating more than 5,900 citations, including key works such as 'One-way diffraction grating' (Journal of Applied Physics, 2006) and 'Ideal Weyl points and helicoid surface states in artificial photonic crystals' (Science, 2018). His contributions have positioned Exeter as a national hub for metamaterials research, fostering collaborations across academia, industry, and government.