DR. FOK SIU LUN ALEX

Biography

Alumnus Alex (Siu Lun) Fok was born in Sheung Shui in 1966. His grandparents had come from the city of Shunde in Guangdong Province. As a result of his father Kam Wing Fok’s secondment to Taiwan, he spent part of his childhood in Kaohsiung where he attended the local Dominican International School. Upon his return to Hong Kong in 1976, he was enrolled at Fung Kai Primary School through the referral of Mr. Yun Sum Liu, Justice of the Peace and a then school board member. With a sound foundation in Mandarin and English from his three years’ stay in Taiwan, and a strong interest in science instilled by his father, Alumnus Fok excelled academically. In 1979, he successfully entered Fung Kai No. 1 Secondary School, continuing his excellent performance at school.

Upon completing Form 3, he went to England to pursue his higher secondary and tertiary education. In 1990, he graduated top of the class with a First Class Honours degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Manchester. By then, he had developed a strong interest in scientific research and he stayed on for graduate studies, researching into the failure theory of brittle materials. After gaining his PhD degree in 1994, he joined the company British Energy, where he was in charge of structural analysis of graphite reactors.

As an avid learner, Alumnus Fok continued to study mathematics in his spare time with the UK Open University. In 1998, with a sponsorship from British Energy, he pursued a Masters degree in Applied Mathematics at the University of Oxford. The year after, he was hired by the University of Manchester as a lecturer to teach Engineering Mathematics and Solid Mechanics. It was not long before he started collaborating with colleagues from the dental school, investigating the mechanical behaviour of dental materials and restorations. In 2007, he was recruited by the University of Minnesota, USA, to assume the directorship of the Minnesota Dental Research Center for Biomaterials and Biomechanics within the School of Dentistry, where he has been working since.

Over the years, with his engineering and mathematical background, Alumnus Fok has opened new avenues for dental materials research. Below are remarks on his research work from Professor David Watts, editor-in-chief of leading international dental research journal Dental Materials: "Prof. Alex Fok has established himself as a global leader in dental materials research, bringing outstanding clarity from an engineering perspective on the biomechanics of oral tissues and restorative materials. His publications in leading journals, frequently based on advanced numerical analysis, regularly break new ground with their original insights and are widely cited."

Apart from devoting himself to his scientific research, Alumnus Fok also has a special interest in the traditional Chinese martial art Taijiquan. He is a disciple of the late Mr. Kin Hou Liu, a former Chinese teacher at Fung Kai No. 1 Secondary School and an inheritor of the Yang-style Taijiquan. Although living abroad, traditional Chinese culture and values are still very much in his heart. In 2006, invited by his senior Shing Tung Lo, Alumnus Fok returned to his alma mater, Fung Kai, to share with his juniors his experiences as a student and a teacher.