25 August 2005

CUHK PhD Student Awarded Prestigious IEEE Graduate Student Fellowship

　　Fok Mei-po, Mable, a PhD student in the Department of Electronic Engineering at The Chinese University of Hong Kong, is awarded a Graduate Student Fellowship by the Laser and Electro-Optics Society (LEOS) of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). The Fellowship includes an award certificate, a cash prize of US$5,000, and a travel grant to cover expenses for the recipients to attend the Award Presentation in the LEOS Annual Meeting in Sydney, Australia in October this year.

　　The Graduate Student Fellowship Program was first established in 1999 to provide Fellowships to outstanding students pursuing graduate education in electro-optics, lasers, photonics, optics and related fields. The international competition is open to student members of LEOS, with a total number of about 1,500 in year 2005. There are altogether 12 fellowships awarded around the world, and Mable is the only recipient in Hong Kong. The other recipient in the Asia-Pacific Region comes from the University of Tokyo. Other awards go to students in prestigious universities in the States and Europe including Stanford, UC Santa Barbara, Cal Tech, University College London and Technische Universitat Berlin.

　　Mable obtained her Bachelor of Engineering and Master of Philosophy degrees from the Department of Electronic Engineering, CUHK, and is currently working towards her PhD in the same department. She was employed by ASM Pacific Technology Ltd. during her work-study year. She has been a summer intern in the Applied Science and Technology Research Institute Ltd. in Hong Kong and has just returned from the States after working as a summer researcher at UCLA.

　　A young and prolific researcher, Mable has published over 25 journal and conference papers in the photonics field. Her research focuses on multi-wavelength laser sources and their applications in ultra-high-capacity communications and all-optical signal processing. Under the supervision of Professor Chester Shu of the Department of Electronic Engineering, CUHK, she has successfully demonstrated the generation of a multi-wavelength pulsed source with individual channel rate operating up to 80 GHz. In addition to its scientific merit, the work finds potential application in enhancing the speed of fiber communication that provides the backbone for today’s internet traffic.

　　In recognition of her contribution, Mable also won other international prizes this year including an outstanding paper award in STFOC’05 Conference in Taipei and a LEOS travel grant to present research papers in OECC Conference in Seoul.

Fok Mei-po, Mable