Dr Hoi-Kwong Lo

Professor

Department of Physics, University of Toronto

PH: 1 (416) 978-0354
Email: [email protected]
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Background

Hoi-Kwong Lo received his B.A. in Mathematics from Trinity College, Cambridge University in 1989. He received his M. S. and Ph. D. in (Theoretical Particle) Physics from the California Institute of Technology in 1991 and 1994 respectively. From 1994 to 1996, he was a Member of the School of Natural Science, the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton. In 1996, he joined Hewlett-Packard Labs, Bristol, UK as a postdoctoral fellow. In 1997, he became a Senior Member of Technical Staff there. In 1999, he took up the posts of the Chief Scientist and Senior Vice President of MagiQ Technologies, Inc., New York, which is a leading company in the commercialization of quantum information. In January 2003, he joined the University of Toronto as an Associate Professor, in both the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the Department of Physics.

His current research interest is quantum information processing, particularly quantum cryptography. He was among the first to demonstrate the impossibility of a whole class of quantum cryptographic protocols including quantum bit commitment, thus correcting an erroneous long-held belief in the field. In a paper in “Science”, he and H. F. Chau provided a proof of security of quantum key distribution, thus solving a long-standing problem. Both results have been widely cited and also reported in the scientific press including “Science” and “Science News”. (See, for example, Charles Seife, Science 1997, May 16; 276: 1034 (in Research News) and Charles Bennett and Peter Shor, Science 1999, April 30, 284; 747-748. (in Perspectives).)

He is a Founding Managing Editor of a leading journal, “Quantum Information and Computation” (QIC) in the field. The journal has been positively reviewed in the journal ``Nature’’. (See, Isaac Chuang, Nature 420, p. 25. (7 Nov. 2002) (in Journal Review). ) Moreover, he has co-edited two books, one of which is a standard reference in the field and has been positively reviewed in the journal ""Nature"". He has written survey articles in leading scientific magazines (“Physics Today” and “Physics World”). In particular, his Physics Today article has been listed as a notable article in “The Best American Science and Nature Writing, 2001” edited by Ed. O Wilson. He is a co-inventor of one US patent, a European patent and several pending international patents.

He has been on the program committees or advisory and award committees of key conferences including International Conference on Quantum Communications, Measurement and Computing (QCMC 2000 and QCMC'02), EQIS 2003, EQIS 2004, EQIS 2005 and more recently, IEEE ISIT 2006. He is a reviewer of top journals in Physics, Mathematics, Computer Science and Electrical Engineering. He is a Canada Research Chair holder, an Ontario Outstanding Researcher, a co-winner of the year 2003 Outstanding Young Researcher Award by the Overseas Chinese Physics Association and have recently been awarded a PREA (Premier’s Research Excellence Award). He is a Scholar of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIAR). Earlier in his career, he won a Prince Philip Scholarship (three-year merit-based full-cost scholarship) for studying at Trinity College, Cambridge University where he won Triple First Class Honors as well as a number of college prizes.

His recent work, decoy protocol, has attracted a lot of scientific and media interest. It has been highlighted in quite a few media news, such as New Scientist, Canadian Technology News, Science Daily, Globe And Mail, Physics News Update, News @ UofT, PhysOrg.com and Optical Engineering magazine.

His research group currently contains two postdocs and five graduate students. Besides the foundations of security, his current research focus includes the security of quantum cryptography with imperfect devices as well as implementations and system building. He has more than half million of research grants for equipment.