Development of Coherent Detector Technologies for Sub-Millimetre Wave Astronomy Observations

After completing the Bachelor degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering in 2001, Boon Kok Tan was offered a postgraduate position in Solar Engineering, and was awarded the Master degree in 2002. Following a lecturing career at Tunku Abdul Rahman University in Kuala Lumpur, he was offered a D. Phil position - funded by the prestigious King of Malaysia awards - at Oxford Astrophysics to work on the development of quantum limited coherent detectors for submillimetre astronomy. B. K. Tan obtained the D. Phil degree at Oxford in 2012. He is currently a member the Millimetre Detectors group of Oxford Astrophysics, leading the development of coherent THz detectors for the Atacama Large Millimetre Array (ALMA) and collaborates also with the Wawasan Open University, Malaysia. Dr. Tan was awarded the 2014 MERAC Prize by the European Astronomical Society for the Best Doctoral Thesis in the category "Technologies".