Ho Tat LAM

(2013 Paul and May Chu UG Research Award)

Ho Tat's interest in Physics and Mathematics was sparked by two mentors in junior high school. He met a Physics tutor who inspired students with advanced Physics topics, fascinating technologies, development history of Physics, and Physics book recommendations. Equally important, he met a Mathematics teacher who encouraged students to do self-study. After becoming a gold medalist in the 2012 International Physics Olympiad, he entered HKUST at the age of 16. With the observation that many Physics problems can be simplified using network structures, he joined Prof. Kwok Yip Szeto's research group. His research project concerns the reliability of networks, that is, whether networks remain connected when some links are broken. He discovered that network reliability is closely related to topology and symmetry, and proposed methods to construct networks with strong reliability. These results will be very useful in constructing more reliable networks such as computer clusters. In the near future, he will continue to study ways to improve network reliability, and he plans to take postgraduate studies in theoretical Physics.