Dr Chan received his Higher Diploma and Associateship in Electronic Engineering from the Department of Electronic Engineering, Hong Kong Polytechnic University (formerly Hong Kong Polytechnic), in 1984 and 1985, respectively. He then went to the UK and completed his MSc degree in Telecommunication Systems at the University of Essex in 1986. From 1987 to 1990, he received a Graduate Assistantship from the Electronic Department of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, which allowed him to complete his PhD degree in the field of integrated optics in 1991. His PhD project is on phase front accelerator effects in optical branching waveguide, which is about a new approach of designing low-loss wide-angle branching waveguide for integrated optical devices. He was also awarded a Cheng Yick Chi Graduate Fellowship for three years during the same period of time. In 1991, he joined the Department of Electronic Engineering, City University of Hong Kong (formerly City Polytechnic Hong Kong), where he is currently Associate Professor.

Dr Chan is currently the Laboratory Director of the Optoelectronics Laboratory He is also an active member of the Optoelectronics Research Centre of the University. His research interests are mainly in the design and fabrication of integrated optical devices, waveguides materials and processing, integrated optical sensors, computer generated hologram, and photonic packaging. In 2001, he was also awarded two grants from Innovation Technology Funding under the University-Industrial Collaboration Programme, which allows him to work with a local photonic manufacturing company in the area of photonic packaging. He is a member of the Optical Society of America (OSA), the International Society for Optical Engineering (SPIE) and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and has published more than60 papers in international journals and conferences.