Trevor Hall studied general engineering, specialising in electrical sciences, at Christ's College, Cambridge University, UK (1974-1977), where he was elected a scholar in 1976 and was awarded a BA degree in 1977 and MA in 1981. He conducted his postgraduate research in fibre optics at University College London where he was awarded a PhD degree in 1980.
In 1979 he joined Cambridge Consultants Ltd as an optical physicist and then in 1980 joined Queen Elizabeth College London as a lecturer in Physics; moving to King's College London in 1984 following a merger. He was promoted to Reader in Physics in 1990.
In 1993 he transferred to the Electronic Engineering Department of King's College London, to take up a position as Head of the Physical Electronics Research Group, and was subsequently promoted to Professor of Optoelectronics in 1994. He spent the year 1997-98 on sabbatical leave as a visiting professor at Cambridge University Engineering Department where he initiated his research into photonic packet switches. The desire to refocus his career into a research-intensive mode motivated his decision to take up a position of full professor at the University of Ottawa from August 2002.
He has conducted research in the fields of fibre optics; electromagnetic scattering and inverse problems; synthetic aperture radar signal processing, image processing and neural networks; non-linear and diffractive optics; optoelectronic information processing; and optoelectronic circuit and packet switching systems. He has also made contributions to microfabrication and heterojunction bipolar transistor technology. He has over 200 publications including 100 papers in journals.The emphasis of his current research is on photonic networks and packet switches. He is author of five patents on packet switch architecture and allied optoelectronic technology. He has been involved in many national and European-wide industry / academic collaborations both as a technical contributor and as a project manager.
In addition to his research interests, he has made contributions to academic leadership and management particularly in the areas of strategic planning; financial, physical & human resources. From 1993-1996, he was a member of the Executive of the Electronic Engineering Department, King's College London, with responsibility for resources. He was also a member of the College-wide Staffing Policy Committee and Chairman of the Technical Staff Panel. He has served on numerous UK Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and Department of Industry (DTI) committees and panels in the Information Technology & Computer Science; Photonics; and Atomic & Molecular Physics programme areas. He was Chair of the Governing Body of a large locally managed secondary school in London from 1985-2002.
He has acted as a consultant to Plessey (now Marconi), British Petroleum, Standard Telephone Laboratories (now Nortel Harlow UK), Fujitsu, and Qinetiq (formerly DERA & RSRE, Malvern UK). He has acted also as a project monitoring officer on behalf of the DTI, as an advisor to EPSRC on public awareness of science.
He is a chartered engineer (C.Eng.) and a chartered physicist (C.Phys); a corporate member of the UK Institution of Electrical Engineers (MIEE); a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and a fellow of the UK Institute of Physics (F.Inst.P). He is Professor Emeritus in Optoelectronics, King's College London, University of London.