Professor Emeritus Carl Bender created the field of PT symmetry in physics with his graduate student, Stefan Boettcher, in 1998.
The Simons Foundation has agreed to support a multi-university grant on “Harnessing Universal Symmetry Concepts for Extreme Wave Phenomena.” The grant is an outgrowth of Bender’s research in the field of PT symmetry in which he has published well over 100 papers. The original paper, published in Physical Review Letters, has well over 4000 citations with more added each week. There are fourteen investigators on the grant from nine universities. This multi-million dollar grant will last 4 years, with an expectation for renewal.
The grant proposal was submitted from CUNY by A. Alu. Besides Bender and Alu, the following professors are on the grant: A. Khanikaev (CUNY), M. Weinstein (Columbia U.), V. Vitelli (U. of Chicago), D. Stone (Yale U.), T. Kottos (Wesleyan U.), D. Christodoulides (U. of Central Florida), N. Engheta R (U. Penn.), S. Johnson (MIT), R. Kohn (Courant Inst., NYU), M. Silveirinha (U. of Lisbon), K. Bertoldi (Harvard U.), and M. Fink (Langevin Institute, Paris).
