Luk graduated from the University of Hong Kong in 1976 with a B.Sc in physics. Shortly thereafter, Luk joined Rutgers University's physics Ph.D. program, completing his Ph.D. in 1983. Luk continued his work in physics by conducting his postdoctoral research at the University of Washington in Seattle until 1986. In 1986, Luk became an R.R. Wilson Fellow at Fermilab, where he worked as an associate scientist until 1989. In 1989, Luk received a joint appointment as an assistant professor of the Physics Department at UC Berkeley and faculty scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. During his first two years working in Berkeley, Luk received the "Department of Energy outstanding junior investigator award", which is designed to "identify exceptionally talented new high energy physicists early in their careers, and to assist and facilitate the development of their research programs." Luk was awarded a Sloan Fellowship between 1990–94, which is awarded to "those who show the most outstanding promise of making fundamental contributions to new knowledge." Luk became a Miller Professor at UC Berkeley in the fall of 2001. He was also a visiting professor in Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. Luk is currently a Hung Hing Ying distinguished visiting professor in science of The University of Hong Kong, and a senior visiting fellow of the Jockey Club Institute for Advanced Study at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.
Research area
Luk conducts research in particle physics both as a professor at UC Berkeley and as a scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Luk has published a number of papers on neutrino oscillation, including his Panofsky Prize winning research at the Daya Bay Nuclear Power Plant. Luk is also known for his work on hyperon physics. His Ph.D. dissertation laid the foundation for determining the polarization of the Omega-minus hyperon. Along with a small group of young colleagues, he initiated Fermilab E756 to measure the magnetic dipole moment of the Omega-minus hyperon. He discovered polarization of the charged anti-cascade hyperon that laid the experimental foundation for investigating CP violation in charged-cascade decays. In the nineties, Luk proposed the HyperCP project conducted at Fermilab, where he and a team of scientists conducted an experiment "designed to search for direct CP Violation in strange-baryon decays with the best precision in the world.". He continues to explore CP Violation but in the neutrino sector through the participation of DUNE.
