The 46th Progress In Electromagnetics Research Symposium (PIERS 2025) was held May 4–8 in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, drawing 1,454 submissions and 1,194 presentations from 50 countries and regions. The College of Information Science and Electronic Engineering (ISEE) co-organized the conference alongside the Electromagnetics Academy ZJU Branch, Khalifa University, the UAE Technology Innovation Institute, and Gulf University for Science and Technology.
PIERS is an annual international symposium in photonics and electromagnetics, first held at MIT in 1989 under Professor Jin Au Kong and has been organized by the Electromagnetics Academy since then. The 2025 program comprised 115 oral sessions, eight poster sessions, 15 keynote lectures, and 320 invited talks, with Hot Topic sessions addressing nanophotonics, topological physics, terahertz chips, and intelligent metasurfaces.
Prof. Chen Hongsheng, Dean of ISEE, delivered a Hot Topic address titled “Intelligent Metamaterials and Metamaterials Intelligence”, examining how deep learning can be applied to photonic design and how wave-based neural network physical computation can operate in space, framing AI and metamaterials as complementary rather than separate research directions.
At the conference’s Fellow Award Ceremony, Prof. Chen was inducted as a Fellow of the Electromagnetics Academy, together with Prof. Gang Li of Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Prof. Pavel Belov of ITMO University in Russia, and Prof. Andrew Forbes of the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa.
Three ISEE doctoral students were recognized in the Best Student Paper Awards. Ma Jinyan (2023 cohort, advised by Prof.Li Erping) and Li Wenhao (2022 cohort, advised by Assistant Prof.Yang Yihao) received First Prizes for “Manipulating Wave-field and Information States in Disordered Scattering Spaces” and “Three-dimensional Topological Valley Photonic Crystals” respectively. Wang Yuqi (2024 cohort, advised by Prof.Ye Dexin) received an Honorable Mention for “Omnidirectionally Matched Cloak for Unpolarized Waves”. The Best Student Presentation Award was established for the first time at this year’s symposium as part of the Academy’s education program.
