Prof Tam Kam Weng in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Faculty of Science and Technology (FST), University of Macau (UM), has received the Ted Williams Award from the Association for Automatic Identification and Mobility – AIM Global, the world’s largest organisation in automatic identification and mobile technology. Of the six industrial award recipients for 2020, Prof Tam is the only one from Macao.

Prof Tam is dedicated to the study of wireless communication, which has earned him an international reputation in the fields of RFID technology and microwave sensors. He has received numerous honours and has been serving in various important positions in the industry since 2014. He is a fellow of the Institution of Engineering and Technology, a chartered engineer of the United Kingdom, a member of the Institution of Engineering and Technology’s review committee for chartered engineers, vice president of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Council on RFID, and a recipient of a scholarship from the European Union for visiting professors. In addition, Prof Tam has received various awards from the Macao Science and Technology Development Fund (FDCT), namely the Natural Science Award, the Technological Invention Award, and the Science and Technology Progress Award. He also serves as a member of the Technical Accreditation Committee and a consultant for radiation safety research of the Macao SAR government. He has published more than 200 papers and obtained a total of five patents, in China and abroad.

With the financial support of from FDCT (Project No.: 015/2013/A1 and 042/2006/A3), Prof Tam has invented a novel planar circularly-polarised antenna based on complementary dipole antenna elements. The design greatly reduces the profile for handheld RFID readers. An ESI paper on the study has been published and frequently cited by industry experts. In addition to research, Prof Tam has provided assistance to the establishment of Macao's first high-tech RFID company, which was founded by local master’s degree graduates in related research fields. The company facilitates industry-academia collaboration by providing intelligent asset management services for public and private institutions in Macao. During his term as the vice chairman of the IEEE Council on RFID, Prof Tam successfully organised four large-scale international conferences for RFID applications in Europe and Asia; these conferences were attended by more than 1,000 scholars and industry practitioners from the two continents, who exchanged ideas on industry-academia collaboration.

Founded in 1972, AIM Global is the largest international organisation in the global automatic identification and mobile technology industry. Its members are well-known companies from around the world, including INTEL, NXP Semiconductors, and Zebra Technologies Corporation. It is mainly focused on key technologies that support smart economy, including barcode technology, radio frequency identification technology, and smart card identification technology. In the past 40 years, AIM Global has been committed to the development of international standards for automatic identification and mobile technology, as well as collaboration with the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) in formulating international standards in related fields. In recent years, the one- and two-dimensional barcode technologies widely used in the world, in applications such as mobile payment and goods identification, are important examples of the international standards developed by the association. In 2007, AIM Global established the Ted Williams Award, which is presented annually to experts and scholars who have made outstanding contributions to the global industry in the application of automatic identification and mobile technology. Previous winners include scholars from world-renowned universities, including the University of Pittsburgh, the Georgia Institute of Technology, and Ohio University.