Romain Fleury is Associate Professor and head of the Laboratory of Wave Engineering at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), where he leads interdisciplinary research at the intersection of wave physics, scattering, and engineered materials. His work focuses on the fundamental physics of wave emission, propagation and scattering, non-reciprocal and topological wave phenomena, and the use of acoustic, optical and microwave metamaterials to achieve unprecedented control of waves in complex environments.

He obtained his Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin in 2015, working with Andrea Alù, and subsequently served as a Marie-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at ESPCI Paris with Mathias Fink, before joining EPFL in 2017. His recent research explores how wave momentum and information can be shaped and harnessed for advanced functionalities — from multi-objective acoustic manipulation to physical neural networks and analog computing — bridging concepts from metamaterials, inverse scattering, and machine learning.

Prof. Fleury has received multiple recognitions including an ERC Starting Grant, the 2021 Brillouin Medal from the International Phononics Society, and the 2019 Polysphere Award for teaching excellence. He is also active in metamaterials technology transfer as founder of the start-up Minwave (2021). This talk will distill these themes, highlighting application opportunities at the nexus of wave physics, metamaterials, and information.