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Willie John Padilla

Dr. Paul Wang Distinguished Professor
Electrical and Computer Engineering

Current Appointments & Affiliations


Dr. Paul Wang Distinguished Professor · 2024 - Present Electrical and Computer Engineering, Pratt School of Engineering
Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering · 2015 - Present Electrical and Computer Engineering, Pratt School of Engineering

In the News


Published March 19, 2024
Duke Announces 32 New Distinguished Professorships

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Recent Publications


Ionic Liquid-Based Reversible Metal Electrodeposition for Adaptive Radiative Thermoregulation Under Extreme Environments

Journal Article Advanced Functional Materials · January 19, 2026 This paper presents the development of an electrochemically-driven variable emission thermoregulating device designed for efficient radiative heat management across various temperature environments. Utilizing the ionic liquid 1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium te ... Full text Cite

An Agentic Framework for Autonomous Metamaterial Modeling and Inverse Design

Journal Article ACS Photonics · November 19, 2025 The evolution from large language models to agentic systems has created a new Frontier of scientific discovery, enabling the automation of complex research tasks that have traditionally required human expertise. We developed and demonstrated such a framewo ... Full text Cite

Deep generalized Green's function

Journal Article Journal of Computational Physics · October 15, 2025 The Green's function has ubiquitous and unparalleled usage for the efficient solving of partial differential equations (PDEs) and analyzing systems governed by PDEs. However, obtaining a closed-form Green's function for most PDEs on various domains is ofte ... Full text Cite
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Recent Grants


Mapping Strain in Composite Materials using Terahertz Metamaterials

ResearchPrincipal Investigator · Awarded by Srico, Inc. · 2024 - 2026

Spectral-Binning Focal Plane Array for Infrared Spectroscopy

ResearchPrincipal Investigator · Awarded by Srico, Inc. · 2025 - 2025

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Education, Training & Certifications


University of California, San Diego · 2004 Ph.D.

External Links


Padilla Lab Website