Scott Yam

Scott Yam holds a B.Eng. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Waterloo, and an M.Sc. and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University. From 2000 to 2003, he worked as a Sprint Fellow at the Sprint Advanced Technology Laboratories (ATL) in Burlingame, California. He joined the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Queen`s as an Assistant Professor in 2004, and was promoted to Associate Professor in July 2010. He spent his sabbatical as a consultant for a technology incubator in Asia (ASTRI in Hong Kong), and has served as consulting professor at Nanjing University in China.

An active researcher in the areas of Optical Communications and Sensing, Dr. Yam has over seventy refereed technical journal and conference publications, two patents and one pending patent application. In April 2010, he became the director of the NSERC CREATE initiative for Next Generation Optical Networks, which aims at revolutionizing training in optical communication in Canada by formalizing graduate industrial internship, and introducing an online common graduate course which pools six faculty experts from Queen’s, McGill and Laval on the simulation and modeling of optical systems and devices. To date, the project has impacted over 45 trainees at the M.Sc., Ph.D., and postdoctoral levels, involving 15+ collaborators from the industry, academia and government organizations from across North America, Asia, and Europe. He is currently the editor of the IEEE Canada E-newsletter, and active in the organization of various international and local technical conferences in Optics and Electrical Engineering.

Dr. Yam was the Past-Chair of the IEEE Kingston Section, and has served as reviewer for various high impact society journals and conferences. He is a recipient of the Young Scientist Award and Student Paper Award from the IEEE LEOS Japan Chapter. Since 2007, he has been working on various international initiatives on behalf of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at both the graduate and undergraduate levels, visiting over twenty universities in East Asia, South Asia, and the Middle East.