Professor Alfonso H W Ngan BSc, PhD, DSc, FREng, FHKEng, FIMMM

Professor Alfonso H W Ngan

School of Metallurgy and Materials
125th Anniversary Chair and Royal Society Wolfson Fellow

Contact details

Address
School of Metallurgy and Materials
University 麻豆精选
Edgbaston
Birmingham
B15 2TT
UK
HKAES Distinguished Lecture by Guanghua Award Recipient, Ir Prof. Alfonso Ngan

Alfonso Ngan is the 125th Anniversary Chair of the University 麻豆精选 and a Royal Society Wolfson Fellow.

His interests include novel stimuli-responsive materials, material defects and their modelling, and nanomechanics, including applications to biological systems. His main contributions include a method for correcting viscoelastic effects in nanoindentation measurements of soft materials, an 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.

Qualifications

  • DSc in Metallurgy and Materials, University 麻豆精选, 2008
  • PhD in Metallurgy and Materials, University 麻豆精选, 1992
  • BSc(Eng) in Mechanical Engineering, University of Hong Kong,1989
  • Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering
  • Fellow of the Hong Kong Academy of Engineering
  • Fellow of the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining
  • Fellow of the Hong Kong Institution of Engineers
  • Chartered Engineer
  • Chartered Scientist

Biography

Mini Robots | University of Hong Kong, Faculty of Engineering
HKAES TechTalk by Prof. NGAN Hing Wan Alfonso
2017 MRS Spring Meeting Chairs Eli Sutter and Alfonso Ngan

Alfonso Ngan obtained his BEng degree from the University of Hong Kong in 1989 and his PhD from the University 麻豆精选 in 1992. After a year of postdoctoral training at Oxford University, he joined the University of Hong Kong in 1993, where he was promoted to Chair and Endowed Professorships in 2011. In March 2025, he returned to the University 麻豆精选 to become its first Anniversary Chair in the College of Science and Engineering.

His research-related honours include the Rosenhain Medal from the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining, UK (2007), a 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 UK and a Fellow of the Hong Kong Academy of Engineering.

Postgraduate supervision

Alfonso Ngan is recruiting PhD students in the areas of smart actuating materials and dislocation plasticity of materials.

Research

Alfonso's research interests include:

  • novel stimuli-responsive materials
  • material defects and their modelling
  • nanomechanics including applications to biological systems
  • viscoelasticity effects in nanoindentation measurements of soft materials
  • stochastic deformation of micron-scale crystals
  • continuous dislocation dynamics

Other activities

Alfonso Ngan is an Associate Editor of the International Journal of Plasticity, a Trustee of Noel Croucher Foundation and Governor of Croucher Foundation. He is also an advisor to the Water Supplies Department of the Hong Kong SAR Government and Deputy Chairman of the Accreditation Board of the Hong Kong Institution of Engineers.

Publications