Prof Michael Loy received his BSc and PhD degrees from the University of California at Berkeley in 1966 and 1971 respectively. He joined HKUST in 1993 as Professor of Physics and served as Dean of Science from 1998 to 2004. Before coming to HKUST, Prof Loy worked for more than 20 years at IBM's T. J. Watson Research Center in New York. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society.

Prof Loy's main research interests include nonlinear optical propagation effects, two-photon coherent transients, nonlinear optical studies of surfaces, the state-selective studies of molecule-surface interactions, and ultrafast dynamics induced by femtosecond laser pulses. His recent interest is on super-resolution optical microscopy for live cell imaging.