Prof Penger Tong received his BSc degree from Northeastern University in China in 1982 and his MSc and PhD degrees from the University of Pittsburgh in 1984 and 1988, respectively. He then spent two and a half years as a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Exxon Research and Engineering Company in New Jersey, USA. In 1990 he took an assistant professorship at Oklahoma State University and became a full professor in 1999. He joined the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in 2003. He served as Associate Dean (Research & Postgraduate Study) of School of Science at HKUST from 2011 to 2016 and is currently a Chair Professor of Physics at HKUST and a Fellow of the American Physical Society. He has served as the Department Head since 2018. Professor Tong has published over 100 refereed journal articles and an edited book. He has given over 160 invited presentations, colloquia and seminars at international and national conferences and research institutions.

Professor Tong’s research is in the area of experimental soft condensed matter physics and his current research interests include structures, interactions, and dynamics of colloidal particles at liquid interfaces and over complex potential landscapes; interfacial pinning, hysteresis, and dynamics near the moving contact line; non-equilibrium processes and dynamics in suspensions and active matter; biophysics in living cells and tissues; anomalous diffusion of membrane-bound proteins and lipids in living cells; high Rayleigh number thermal convection; transport in turbulent flows; hydrodynamic interactions, instabilities, and pattern formation in suspensions of non-Brownian particles.

Prof. Tong was elected PSHK Fellow in 2023, “for his seminal discoveries and exploration of soft matter dynamics and fluid physics and his many contributions to education in experimental physics."