After receiving his B.Sc. in Physics from Northeastern University in China in 1982, Prof. Penger Tong went to the United States, where he earned his M.Sc. and PhD in Physics 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 was appointed as an assistant professor at Oklahoma State University and was promoted to 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 the School of Science from 2011 to 2016 and as Head of the Physics Department from 2018 to 2021. He currently serves as Associate Vice-President for Research and Development (Research) and Chair Professor of Physics at HKUST. Professor Tong has published over 130 refereed journal articles and an edited book. He has given over 200 invited presentations, colloquia, and seminars at international and national conferences and research institutions. He is a fellow of the American Physical Society.

Professor Tong’s research is in the area of experimental soft condensed matter physics and his current research interests include interactions and dynamics of colloidal monolayers at liquid interfaces and over complex potential landscapes; interfacial pinning, hysteresis, and dynamics near the three-phase contact line between liquid and solid interfaces; non-equilibrium processes and dynamics in suspensions and active matter; anomalous diffusion and transport of membrane-bound proteins and vesicles in living cells; mechanical properties of protein condensates, living cells and tissues; statistical properties of fully developed turbulence; high Rayleigh number thermal convection; boundary layer dynamics and transport phenomena in turbulent flows; large-scale circulation and thermocline in oceans.

Representative Publications

• “Avalanches and extreme value statistics of a moving contact line,” C.-S. Yan, D.-S. Guan, Y. Wang, P.-Y. Lai, H.-Y. Chen and P. Tong, Phys. Rev. Lett. 132, 084003 (2024) (Editors’ Suggestion).
• “Statistical laws of stick-slip friction at mesoscale,” C.-S. Yan, H.-Y. Chen, P.-Y. Lai and P. Tong, Nature Communications 14, 6221 (2023).
• “Fluctuation-induced slip of thermal boundary layers at a stable liquid-liquid interface,” H.-L. Huang, W. Xu, Y. Wang, X.-P. Wang, X.-Z. He, and P. Tong, J. Fluid Mech. 951, A10 (2022)
• “Unified description of compressive modulus revealing multiscale mechanics of living cells,” D.-S. Guan, Y.-S. Shen, R. Zhang, P.-B. Huang, P.-Y. Lai, and P. Tong, Phys. Rev. Research 3, 043166 (2021).
• “State- and rate-dependent contact line dynamics over an aging soft surface,” D.-S. Guan, E. Charlaix and P. Tong, Phys. Rev. Lett. 124, 188003 (2020).
• “Onset of thin film meniscus along a fiber,” S. Guo, X.-M. Xu, T.-Z. Qian, Y.-N. Di, M. Doi and P. Tong, J. Fluid Mech. 865, 650 (2019).
• “Mechanism of large-scale flow reversals in turbulent thermal convection,” Y. Wang, P.-Y. Lai, H. Song, and P. Tong, Science Advances 4, eaat7480 (2018).
• “Noncontact viscoelastic imaging of living cells using a long-needle atomic force microscope with dual-frequency modulation,” D.-S. Guan, E. Charlaix, R. Z. Qi, and P. Tong, Phys. Rev. Applied 8, 044010 (2017) [Editors’ Suggestion, featured in Physics, 10, 117 (2017)].
• “Dynamic heterogeneity and non-Gaussian statistics for acetylcholine receptors on live cell membrane,” W. He, H. Song, Y. Su, L. Geng, B. J. Ackerson, H. B. Peng, and P. Tong, Nature Communications, 7:11701 (2016).
• “Colloidal transport and diffusion over a tilted periodic potential: dynamics of individual particles,” X.-G. Ma, Pik-Yin Lai, B. J. Ackerson, and P. Tong, Soft Matter, 11, 1182 (2015).

Full Publication List [HKUST Scholarly Publications]