Thermal energy, or heat, flows naturally from hot to cold, making it difficult to create localized thermal “hot spots” even when heat is applied to a single spot. As a material’s size is reduced to 10-100s of nanometers, depositing and maintaining thermal energy within a small spatial region becomes even more challenging. Yet controlling heat flow and thus temperature at nanoscopic dimensions has critical importance in data storage, local photochemistry, photothermal disease therapies, and pain management.  Our research focuses on designing a new class of thermal metamaterials capable of controllably directing temperature increases to nanoscale regions of space using light.