This year, META 2016, the 7th edition of the International Conference on Metamaterials, Photonic Crystals and Plasmonics took place in Torremolinos, near Málaga in Spain. Since the first meeting of this series in Marrakesh in 2008 the conference has seen an ever-increasing interest reflecting the growing research community in this field. After Cairo (2010), Paris (2012), Dubai (2013), Singapore (2014) and New York (2015) the organizers of the conference have again chosen a beautiful location to hold the meeting. In a town where others spend their vacation, the top experts in nanophotonics, metamaterials research and related fields came together from July 25 – 28 to share their research results.
The conference was held in conjunction with AES 2016, the 4th Advanced Electromagnetics Symposium, thus giving researchers the opportunity to interact even better. With the meeting rooms in the Torremolinos Congress Centre arranged in a circle, all participants came together in the free space in the middle for coffee breaks and poster sessions. In that way many lively and inspiring discussions were induced certainly leading to several ideas for further research.
The attractive program was clustered in different areas including several special sessions on topics like quantum plasmonics, new plasmonic materials, hyperbolic metamaterials, bio-inspired photonics, chiral optics, plasmonic sensing and many others. From Monday to Wednesday the morning program started with plenary sessions where top researchers gave an insight into their research fields. To name just a few of the many highlights, David R. Smith presented a talk on “Translational Metamaterials Research: Taking Metamaterials from the Laboratory to the Marketplace”, Sir John B. Pendry talked about “Transformation optics, surface plasmons, and metasurfaces” and Andrea Alù reported on “Breaking reciprocity and time-reversal symmetry with metamaterials”.
Apart from the scientific program the organizers also offered social events including a conference dinner with a flamenco show and an excursion to Tangier, Morocco.
At the end of the week attendees could take home many new insights and new contacts which will hopefully lead to further cooperation in the future. The perfect opportunity to meet again will be next year when META moves on to Incheon – Seoul in Korea.
