Professor Alfonso Ngan is Kingboard Professor in Materials Engineering and Chair Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Hong Kong. He obtained his BSc(Eng) degree from the University of Hong Kong in 1989, and PhD from the University of Birmingham in the U.K. in 1992. After a year of postdoctoral training at Oxford University, he joined HKU in 1993, and was promoted through the ranks to Chair Professorship in 2011.
Professor Ngan is an expert in the microstructural basis of properties of engineering materials, in particular, crystalline defects and their modeling, and nanomechanics including applications to biological systems. His main contributions include a method for correcting viscoelastic effects in nanoindentation measurements of soft materials, understanding of stochastic deformation behaviour in small crystals, an exact formalism of continuous dislocation kinematics, and the discovery of a novel class of metal hydroxides/oxides as stimuli-responsive actuating materials. His research-related honours include the Rosenhain Medal from the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining, U.K. (2007), higher doctorate (DSc) from the University of Birmingham (2008), Croucher Senior Research Fellowship (2009), Changjiang Professorship from the Chinese Ministry of Education (2019), and Guanghua Engineering Science and Technology Prize of the Chinese Academy of Engineering (2020). He is an International Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in the U.K., and Fellow of the Hong Kong Academy of Engineering Sciences. He has organized a number of key conferences, including Dislocations 2008 and Gordon Research Conference on Nanomechanical Interfaces in 2013, both held in Hong Kong, and has served as a Meeting Chair in the Materials Research Society 2017 Spring Meeting held in Phoenix, USA. He also serves in a number of advisory/management boards in the Hong Kong SAR Government.
5 October 2022
