Yongfa Kong: PhD, Professor of Physics, PhD supervisor, Vice dean of School of Physics, Vice dean of TEDA Institute of Applied Physics, Nankai University. Supported by Trans-Century Training Programme Foundation for the Talents by the Ministry of Education of China. Member of Chinese Professional Committee of Crystal Growth and Materials, and Editorial Board Member of Laser Technology and Journal of Synthetic Crystals. He has done a series of work in the growth, defect structure controlling, and characteristic optimization of nonlinear optical and photonic crystals, photonic micro-structure, etc.
Research direction: Functional material physics, crystal physics, and nonlinear photonic materials.
Research topics and academic works: He has presided over ten research foundations, such as 863 Projects, International S&T Cooperation Program, the Key Project of Science and Technology of Tianjin, the National Natural Science Foundation of China, Trans-Century Training Programme Foundation for the Talents by the Ministry of Education of China, Cooperation Projects with Companies, etc. He has grown heavily indium-doped lithium niobate crystals with optical damage resistance as high as heavily magnesium-doped lithium niobate crystal, which also called as Star of China. He found that zirconium-doped lithium niobate crystals own the ability to resist ultraviolet optical damage, which other doped lithium niobate crystals doesn't own, and this result was selected as Research Highlights by Nature Photonics. He has published over hundred papers in international magazines, which were cited by other researchers over thousands of times. Twenty-five patents of invention were applied and 18 of them were licensed at present including 1 United States Patent. He published one monograph. He was awarded with the Second Prize of National Natural Science, the Second Prize of Tianjin Technical Invention Award and the First Prize of Tianjin Science and Technology Progress Award.
