School of Electronic, Electrical and Systems 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.

Michael Kong is an expert in low-temperature gas plasmas and their biomedical applications, in particular the use of low-temperature gas plasmas to sterilise surgical instruments and medical devices, decontaminate food stuffs and food processing surfaces; and disinfect skins and living tissues.  He shared with two US-based scientists the inaugural International Plasma Medicine Prize.  His contribution to low-temperature gas plasmas include the discovery of the alpha and gamma modes in radio-frequency atmospheric pressure glow discharges, the advance of highly repetitive (up to MHz) nanosecond and sub-nanosecond pulsed cold atmospheric plasmas, and the development of two-dimensional spatially extended atmospheric plasma arrays.  He has published over 115 journal publications and some 140 peer-reviewed conference presentations, and achieved some 1,150 citations. Over the past 10 years, he has given 47 plenary/invited talks at international scientific conferences in plasma science and microbiology and his Hirsch index is 20 for his papers published since 2000.  His work has been reported in BBC (2004, and Nov 2009) and New York Times (Feb 2010).
 
He chaired the IoP International Symposium on Nonthermal Atmospheric Plasmas in London (2000), the 4th UK Technological Plasma Workshop in Manchester (2006), and will be the General Chair for the 39th IEEE International Conference on Plasma Science in Edinburgh, UK (2012).  He sits on the ExCom of Plasma Science and Application of IEEE, and the Editorial Board of Plasma Sources Science and Technology.   He has been a Guest Editor for IEEE Transactions on Plasma Science (twice), Plasma Processes and Polymers; New Journal of Physics; and is at present a Guest Editor for Plasma Sources Science and Technology.  He is a member of the EPSRC college and has been on 4 separate EPSRC panels.   He is a regular reviewer for grant applications to EPSRC, EU, NSF (US) as well as funding agencies in Belgium, China, Holland, Korea and Russia.
 
His current research interest includes:
·         Low-temperature atmospheric plasma sources (including microplasmas, plasma jet arrays);
·         Low-temperature atmospheric plasma chemistry (in oxygen-, nitrogen, and water-containing gases);
·         Low temperature plasma interaction with living tissues;
·         Plasma decontamination solutions for hospitals;
·         Plasma species interaction with bacterial and mammalian cells

Michael teaches Electromagnetism (ELA005) to first year undergraduate students and Matlab as a Scientific Programming Language (ELP002) to MSc students.