Professor Kristiaan Neyts, Director of the SKL and the Professor in the Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering (ECE) at HKUST.

Prof. Neyts received a degree in physics engineering in 1987, a doctoral degree in engineering in 1992 and became professor in the Department of Electronics and Information Syestm (ELIS) department in 2000 after post-docs in  Ghent University and University of California, Berkeley .His over 290 papers in the Web of Science core collection, and promotor or co-promotor of 30 completed PhDs. He founded the Liquid Crystals and Photonics Group (LCP) at UGent which has now 5 professors, 2 post-docs and 18 PhD students. He was also co-founder of the Center for Nano- and Bio-Photonics, a UGent sponsored Multi-disciplinary Research Network.

Prof. Neyts chaired or co-chaired several conferences organized in Ghent: the EL2002 (Electroluminescence); the LCP2006 International Workshop on Liquid Crystals for Photonics; the ELOPTO Symposium in September 2012; the SID-ME chapter meeting in April 2013; the ELKIN conference in May 2014 and the SID-EURODISPLAY conferences in 2015 and in 2019.Prof. Neyts has also garnered numerous awards and distinctions over the years. He is a recipient of the Sidmar award for best master thesis in the faculty of engineering in 1988, AIG award for best PhD thesis at the faculty of engineering in 1993.He was honored with the Facebook Reality Labs Liquid Crystal Research award for two consecutive years, earning the Diamond Award in 2020 and the Gold Award in 2021.

Prof. Neyts's research focuses on the field of liquid crystals (photoalignment, director topology, ion transport, integration with silicon, chiral nematic, blue phase, ferro-electric nematic, polymerized, spatial light modulator), thin film optics (cholesteric liquid crystal, geometric phase, diffractive components, augmented reality), emissive devices (OLED outcoupling, lasing, nanoparticle emission, microcavity effects), electrophoresis (display applications, biosensing, elementary charge measurement, smart windows), ferro-electric thin films, human color perception.