Academic Staff

Hwa-yaw Tam obtained his. B.Sc. (1985) and Ph.D. (1990) in Electrical and Electronic Engineering at The University of Manchester.  In 1990, he joined Hirst Research Centre, GEC-Marconi Ltd. (London), working on optical components, and fibre laser systems.  He conducted pioneering works in optical fibre amplifiers, and patented the low-loss splicing technique between erbium fibre and standard fibres in 1991. In 1992, he designed and built Italian PTT’s first two optical fibre amplifiers.

Prof. Tam joined The Hong Kong Polytechnic in 1993 and is the former Head of the Department of Electrical Engineering (2012-2023) of the Hong Kong Polytechnic University.  He is the Chair Professor of Photonics at the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, and Associate Director of Photonics Research Institute (PRI).  At PolyU, Prof. Tam established the high-speed communication laboratory, the Smart Railway Research Laboratory, the Specialty Optical Fibre Fabrication Laboratory, and several laser platforms for fibre grating fabrication. His research interests include fibre fabrication, and optical fibre sensor systems for railways, smart buildings and medicines. Prof. Tam has extensive research collaborations with many universities around the world, including with Melbourne University in smart cochlear implants, and Collège de France in battery monitoring.

Prof. Tam has many industry collaboration projects.  His team has installed many optical fiber sensor systems, including the SHM system for the 610-m Canton Tower in China, and more than 10 railway condition-based monitoring (CDM) systems in Hong Kong, China mainland, Singapore, the Netherlands, Taiwan, and India.   In 2007, Prof. Tam’s team built the world’s first city-wide fibre-optic sensor network for CDM of MTR trains in Hong Kong, and later installed the CDM systems for SMRT, Singapore (2017).  In 2023, Prof. Tam was awarded the projects to build the CBM systems for the new MTR’s Shatin-Central Metro Link, and for the Hong Kong Airport Automated People Mover.

Prof. Tam established the Engineering and Entrepreneurship Club (EEC) in 2017, and built the EEC Laboratory to provide training for undergraduate students in any disciplines to compete in international robotic events, to work on multidisciplinary industrial projects, and to navigate the entrepreneurship landscape.

Prof. Tam won numerous international awards for his inventions, and is the Third Prize Winner of the prestigious Berthold Leibinger Innovationspreis 2014.  It is a biennial event and is one of the highest remunerated international innovation prizes for laser technology. Prof. Tam published more than 700 technical papers and awarded/applied about 20 patents. He is a Chartered Engineer of the Engineering Council (UK), an IEEE Fellow, and Fellow of Optica.

• Bachelor of Science, The Victoria University of Manchester
• Doctor of Philosophy, The Victoria University of Manchester

• Chartered Electrical Engineer and Member of the Institution of Engineering and Technology