Distinguished Lecture by
Prof. George Barbastathis of MIT

The Technological and Higher Education Institute of Hong Kong (THEi) is honoured to have invited Prof. George Barbastathis, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), as a guest speaker for the Distinguished Lecture Series. Professor Barbastathis presented a lecture on Now You See It, Now You Don’t: the Science of “Hide and Seek” to share an overview of examples from Computational Imaging and Transformation Optics work in his research group.  The lecture got overwhelming response and drew over 300 participants from the Faculty of Science and Technology, students and colleagues from IVE, academics from other universities as well as representatives from industry.  The audience were intrigued by Professor Barbastathis’ use of optical techniques to turn invisible objects visible and visible objects invisible.

Prof. George Barbastathis joined MIT in 1999 where he is now Professor of Mechanical Engineering.  He has worked or held visiting appointments at Harvard University, the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART) Centre, the National University of Singapore, and the University of Michigan – Shanghai Jiao Tong University Joint Institute in Shanghai.  His research interests are three-dimensional and spectral imaging; phase estimation, and gradient index optics theory and implementation with subwavelength-patterned dielectrics.  He is member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineering (IEEE), the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME).  In 2010 he was elected Fellow of the Optical Society of America (OSA) and in 2015 was a recipient of China’s Top Foreign Scholar (“One Thousand Scholar”) Award.