Mable Fok

Mable P. Fok is a Chinese and American researcher in photonics and soft robotics, including bio-inspired photonics, optical neural networks, fiber-optic sensors for sensing the shapes of soft materials, microwave photonics,¹ and the design of soft robot grippers.² She is a professor of engineering, assistant dean for academic and faculty affairs, and director of the Photonics and Soft Robotics Lab at the University of Georgia.³

Fok was a student of electronic engineering at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, where she received a bachelor's degree in 2002, a master's degree in 2004, and a Ph.D. in 2007.³

She joined the University of Georgia in 2012,⁴ after postdoctoral research at Princeton University. She was promoted to associate professor in 2017, and to full professor in 2023.³ She was appointed as assistant dean in 2023.⁵

Fok was elected as a Fellow of Optica, in the 2026 class of fellows, "for seminal contributions to the adaptive and flexible use of fiber optics for soft material sensing and bioinspired microwave photonic systems".¹