Prof TAM Hwa-yaw Head(EE), ADoPRI, Chair Professor of Photonics
BSc(Eng), PhD, IEEE Fellow, OSA Fellow, CEng, MIEE

Location CF624
Phone +852 2766 6175
mail hwa-yaw.tam@polyu.edu.hk

Open Platform for University Scholars
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Biography Hwayaw Tam, received his primary and secondary education in Sabah, Malaysia. He studied B.Sc. and Ph.D. in Electrical and Electronic Engineering at The University of Manchester (UK). From 1989 to 1993 he was with Hirst Research Center, GEC-Marconi Ltd. (London), working on optical components and systems, and erbium optical fiber amplifiers. He conducted pioneering works in optical fibre amplifiers, and in 1992 built two of the first batch of optical amplifiers for Italian PTT.
Prof. Tam joined The Hong Kong Polytechnic in 1993 and is currently the Head of Department, Chair Professor of Photonics at the Department of Electrical Engineering and Associate Director of Photonics Research Institute (PRI)at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Prof. Tam established several world-class research facilities at PolyU, including two fibre-drawing towers for fabrication of photonics crystal fibres and polymer optical fibres, an ultra high-speed communication laboratory, and laser platforms for the fabrication of advanced fibre gratings. His current research interests include fabrication of special optical silica fibres and polymer fibres, optical fibre communications, and fibre sensor systems based on fibre Bragg gratings and photonic crystal fibres. Prof. Tam published more than 500 technical papers and awarded/applied about 20 patents, has extensive international research collaborations with many universities around the world and is a keynote/invited speaker at more than 40 international conferences.
Prof. Tam has strong R&D collaboration with industry and his team installed many FBG sensing systems, including an FBG-based SHM system for the 610-m Canton Tower in Guangzhou, China and several condition-monitoring systems for railways in Hong Kong, China mainland, Taiwan, and India. Currently, Prof. Tam’s R&D team is building the world’s first city-wide fibre-optic sensing network for condition-based monitoring of metro systems in Hong Kong. Prof. Tam won numerous international awards for his inventions, and is the Third Prize Winner of the Berthold Leibinger Innovationspreis 2014. Berthold Leibinger Innovationspreis is a biennial event and it is one of the highest remunerated international innovation prizes for laser technology




Education and Academic Qualifications Doctor of Philosophy, The Victoria University of Manchester
Bachelor of Science, The Victoria University of Manchester




Professional Qualifications Chartered Electrical Engineer and Member of the Institution of Engineering and Technology