Electronic and Electrical Engineering

For the past 10 years, Michael’s research has been in the field cold atmospheric plasmas and their biomedical applications, the latter being a central feature of the emerging field of plasma medicine in which near room temperature plasmas are used to decontaminate surgical instruments, disinfect skin and living tissues, stimulate healing of chronic wounds, and suppress tumour growth.  Sometimes these medical issues are addressed using ultrashort pulsed electric fields in conjunction with cold atmospheric plasmas. Michael has published over 100 peer-reviewed journal papers and has since 2000 given more than 40 plenary/invited talks at major international conferences. 

Michael is an external examiner at University of Bradford, and has been an external examiner for PhD thesis at the Universities of Ghent, Manchester, and Nottingham, and Dublin City University. In the UK, he is a member of EPSRC College and chaired one EPSRC panel.  Outside the UK, he has been adviser to funding policy committees in the US and China.

Michael is a member of the editorial board of Plasma Sources Science and Technology, and has been a Guest Editor for IEEE Transactions on Plasma Science (twice), Plasma Processes and Polymers, New Journal of Physics and Plasma Sources Science and technology.  He is a founding member of the International Society of Plasma Medicine.  He is a reviewer for both physics/engineering journals (e.g. Applied Physics Letters) and biology journals (e.g. Lancet) , as well as for grants applications to funding agencies in the UK, US, EU, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, and China.  He has been a member of scientific organisation committees and a session chair for numerous conferences.  In addition, he chaired the 4^th UK Technological Plasma Workshop in 2006 and is the General Chair for the 2012 IEEE International Conference on Plasma Science.

Michael Kong received the BSc and MSc Degrees both in Physical Electronics from Zhejiang University, PR China in 1984 and 1987 respectively.  He received the PhD degree from the University of Liverpool, UK in 1992 for his work on low-voltage free-electron lasers.  

He held postdoctoral assistant posts at the Universities of Liverpool and Nottingham, working on electron beam plasmas and computational electromagnetics, before he was appointed to a lectureship in 1995 at the University of Liverpool where his work became wide-ranging including high-pressure thermal plasmas, electrical insulation, high-voltage switchgears, high energy density capacitors, optoelectronics and optical sensors, and low-temperature atmospheric plasmas.  In 1999, he was appointed to a senior lecturer at Loughborough University, UK and was promoted at Loughborough to a full professorship in bioelectrical engineering in 2004.  Together with Prof David Williams (Wolfson) and Prof Chris Hewitt (Chem Engineering), he co-founded the Centre for Biological Engineering at Loughborough in 2009.