Dr. Johan Christensen is a Senior Researcher and Head of the Acoustic and Mechanical Metamaterials research group at IMDEA Materials Institute. His research focus is in wave physics and the theoretical description and numerical modelling of acoustic and mechanical metamaterials and topological insulators.

Dr. Christensen obtained a bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering and a Master’s Degree in Mechatronics from the University of Southern Denmark (SDU) before completing his PhD at the Autonomous University of Madrid. Before joining IMDEA Materials, he worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) and as an Assistant Research Professor at the Technical University of Copenhagen.

In both roles his work was focused predominantly in the field of acoustic metamaterials. From 2017 to 2022, he worked as an ERC Starting Grant research fellow at Madrid’s Carlos III University, during which time he was the lead author on non-Hermitian topological whispering gallery published in the prestigious scientific journal Nature.

In total, Dr. Christensen has authored or co-authored more than 100 papers in peer-reviewed international journals such as: 2 Nature, 2 Nature Reviews Materials, 1 Nature Nanotechnology, 2 Nature Physics, 6 Advanced Materials, 1 Advanced Functional Materials, 12 Physical Reviews Letters, and 4 Nature Communications, garnering more than 9000 citations.

He is a key player internationally in acoustic and mechanical metamaterials and has been on technical and advisory boards of numerous international organizations and conferences. He has also obtained several awards and grants such as a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions Doctoral fellowship, two Carlsberg fellowships, the Young Elite researcher prize from the Danish Research Council, a Ramon y Cajal fellowship from the Spanish government, a Starting Grant from the European Research Council and the Phononic Young Investigator Award from the International Phononic Society.

He was recently included in Stanford University’s ranking of the world’s top 2% of scientists worldwide. Also, he has given 10 keynote and plenary lectures at international conferences. A primary focus of his research at IMDEA Materials will be in using the topology of the underlying lattice structure of metamaterials to determine dynamic wave and static responses.