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

• DSc in Metallurgy and Materials, University of Birmingham, 2008
• PhD in Metallurgy and Materials, University of Birmingham, 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

Alfonso Ngan obtained his BEng degree from the University of Hong Kong in 1989 and his PhD from the University of Birmingham 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 of Birmingham 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.

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

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

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.