PRI people

Prof Hwa-yaw Tam obtained his B.Sc. and Ph.D. in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from The University of Manchester (UK).  He is Chair Professor of Photonics and the Head of the Electrical Engineering Department and Director of the Photonics Research Centre at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. From 1989 to 1993 Prof Tam was with Hirst Research Centre, GEC-Marconi Ltd. (London), working on optical components and systems, and erbium optical fibre amplifiers. 

His current research interests include design and fabrication of specialty optical fibres for sensor applications, and optical fibre monitoring systems for railways, smart buildings, renewable energy, and medical markets. Prof Tam has published about 700 technical papers, holds about 20 patents, and has an H-index of 56 in Google Scholar.  His research group has spun-off 7 photonics companies in the past 20 years. Prof. Tam has developed optical fibre sensors and sensing networks for condition monitoring applications in Hong Kong, China mainland, Taiwan, Singapore, Netherlands, Australia and India. In 2012, he developed an optical fibre sensor-based structural health monitoring system on the 610-m tall Canton TV Tower in Guangzhou, China. In 2014, Prof Tam built the world’s first city-wide fibre-optic sensing networks for condition-based monitoring of six MTR lines in Hong Kong.  In 2015, Prof. Tam was awarded a project by Singapore SMRT to build four monitoring systems for the North-South and East-West SMRT lines.  He also developed optical fibre sensor systems to monitor the interaction between pantograph and overhead lines in the Netherlands and Sydney. Prof Tam won many international awards for his inventions, including the prestigious Berthold Leibinger Innovationspreis Prize in 2014 for the application of laser sensing technology in railway monitoring. Berthold Leibinger Innovationspreis is one of the highest remunerated international innovation prizes for laser technology. Prof. Tam is an IEEE Fellow, a Fellow of the Optical Society of America, and a Chartered Engineer of the UK Engineering Council.

• 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