Hoi-Kwong Lo

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 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. He became a Full Professor there in 2009.

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 was a Founding Managing Editor of a leading journal, "Quantum Information and Computation"(QIC) in the field. 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". He is a co-inventor in two US patent and a European patent

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 IEEE ISM 2006, AQIS (2007,2008,2009), TQC(2008,2010,2011) & QCrypt 2011. 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 was awarded a PREA (Premier's Research Excellence Award in 2003). He is a Fellow of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIAR).

His recent work on quantum hacking and decoy state protocol has attracted a lot of scientific and media interest. It has been highlighted in quite a few new articles in places such asThe Economist, Nature, Nature News, Canadian Technology News, Science Daily, Globe And Mail, Physics world, Technology review, Physics News Update, News @ UofT, PhysOrg.com, Optical Engineering magazine, New Scientist, and Toronto Star.

His research group currently contains one senoir research associate, three postdocs and eight graduate students. His current research focus on quantum information processing, particularly, theoretical and experimental quantum cryptography, and entanglement theory

Degrees:

• 1989- 1994 Doctor of Philosophy (Physics) Caltech, Pasadena CA, USA
• 1989- 1991 Master of Science (Physics) Caltech, Pasadena CA. USA
• 1986-1989 Bachelor of Arts (Mathematics): Triple First Class Honours. Trinity College, Cambridge University, UK [Master of Arts (Mathematics) awarded in 1993.]