After the first plenary lecture, participants split into five parallel sessions with topics such as “Metamaterials for Thermal Radiation”, “Physics of Complex Electromagnetic Media”, and “Nonlinear, non-Hermitian and Topological Acoustics”. Focused special sessions covered Metamaterials and Information, Metamaterials and Sustainable Energy, Metamaterials and Robotics and Metamaterials and Fluids. Across all sessions, the scientific program comprised 267 talks and 83 poster presentations. Besides the scientific program, coffee breaks, lunches and the conference banquet provided plentiful opportunities for discussion and collaboration. The program was put together by Corentin Coulais (IoP) and Francesco Monticone (Cornell University). After the conference, Corentin said: “It was deeply inspiring to see the breadth of topics, from mechanics, optics, quantum mechanics, and even machine learning that the field of metamaterials can unite.”

Following the main meeting, the Doctoral School on “Metamaterials and Information” welcomed 60 PhD students and postdocs for seven tutorial-style lectures, a hands-on workshop, and a career-focused panel featuring speakers from industry, finance, government and academia. The school was organized by Sander Mann (IoP), Humeyra Caglayan (TUe) and Femius Koenderink (AMOLF/IoP).

The conference organizers Femius Koenderink, Sander Mann, Jorik van de Groep (IoP), Humeyra Caglayan, Esther Alarcón Lladó (UvA HIMS) , and Albert Polman (AMOLF/IoP) want to thank all speakers, participants, sponsors and host institutions for making Metamaterials ’25 such an inspiring and productive gathering! They look forward to the next edition of Metamaterials in New York in September 2026.