Prof. Alan Pak Tao LAU
Assoc. Dean(CUS) & Professor(EEE)
B.A.Sc., M.A.Sc. (Toronto), Ph.D. (Stanford), FOptica
- CF610
- +852 3400 3346
- alan.pt.lau@polyu.edu.hk
- Personal Website
ORCID ID
SCOPUS IDBiography
Alan Pak Tao Lau received the B.A.Sc. degree in engineering science (electrical option) and the M.A.Sc. degree in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, in 2003 and 2004, respectively, and the Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA, in 2008. He then joined The Hong Kong Polytechnic University as an Assistant Professor and is currently Professor of the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering(EEE). He also serves in various administrative roles in PolyU including Associate Head (Promotions and Global Relations) of EEE and currently Associate Dean(Academic Programmes) of the College of Undergraduate Studies(CUS) and Programme Leader of PolyU’s Bachelor’s Degree Scheme in Interdisciplinary Studies(BDSIS). He was also a Visiting Professor of Stanford University in 2019.
Professor Lau’s research lies in the interdisciplinary intersection of optics, communications, statistics and Machine Learning and covers analytical modelling, digital signal processing techniques and Machine Learning applications to long-haul and short-reach optical communications, optical performance monitoring, physical-aware optical networking and optical fiber sensing. He has numerous World-record experimental demonstrations in transmission speed and collaborates extensively with industry such as Huawei, Alibaba, Corning, NEC Labs etc and contributed to the development of algorithms that have been integrated into commercial networks. He also helped open sourced the first comprehensive large-scale physical-layer dataset for deployed optical network for Machine Learning and related research for the optical networking community.
Professor Lau is a fellow of OPTICA for “developing digital signal processing techniques for optical communication systems” and is very active in serving the community. Most notably, he is the Program Chair of Optical Fiber Communications (OFC) 2027, served as the Associate Editor for Journal of Lightwave Technology(JLT) and currently serves as member of the Publication Council of IEEE Photonics Society. He co-edited 2 books and contribute to a few book chapters in optical communications and related areas.
Outside of teaching, research and administrative work, Prof. Lau is a pop and jazz pianist and occasionally perform in weddings and other events.
More information about Prof. Lau’s work can be found in the following links:
Education and Academic Qualifications
- Doctor of Philosophy in Electrical Engineering, The Leland Stanford Junior University
