Professor Ir. Dr. Chong has more than 18 years of experience in academic, research, consultancy and editorial works. He began his Ph.D. research by working in an ARC Linkage project (partners: AWQC, SA Water, Uni of Adelaide, Uni of South Australia) that investigated the feasibility of solar photocatalysis as an AOP for reusing the treated sewage effluents from Bolivar WWTP in South Australia. Shortly before the submission of his Ph.D. thesis, he was employed as a Research Scientist at CSIRO and worked on a number of urban water projects in Southeast Queensland that were funded by the UWSRA. He was a key researcher in the urban water team by leading on a range of urban water research activities, and later becoming a project leader for two CSIRO capability theme projects. After CSIRO, he joined Monash University Malaysia (MUM) as Senior Lecturer and later being promoted to Associate Professor and Professor. Currently, he is the Director of Centre for Net-Zero Technology at MUM. He has attracted more than RM 20 million in competitive research funding as both PI and CI from his research career to date. His academic and research portfolio are accoladed with various prizes, awards and fellowships from national and international learned bodies and societies, such as being awarded the prestigious Royal Society of UK Newton Advanced Fellowship, Green Talents Award, Top Research Scientist Malaysia and others. In a recent ranking study by Stanford University, he is ranked among the World's Top 2% Scientists in his fields of research (i.e., Chemical Engineering & Environmental Sciences) for 4 consecutive years from 2020-2023 (i.e., both for the single-year and career-wise categories). Professor Chong is always open to new research ideas and collaborations, as he believes that these are the key drivers for the creation of new innovations in this modern era. To date, he has published more than 200 publications in high-impact journals, conference proceedings, book chapters, and client consultancy reports. 

Dwindling of carbon-derivative fuels, and the continuing search for alternative and renewable energy sources have led to our current research in the production of solar fuels from the oxidation of water molecule and reduction of carbon dioxide. Sunlight is present in abundance on Earth, and our research is developing novel nanostructured photoelectrodes that could capitalise and convert sunlight into various solar energy vectors in a photoelectrochemical cell. This production route is deemed cost-effective and sustainable, as it does not involve the need of fossil fuels and subsequent elimination on the emission of environmental deleterious greenhouse gases. However, the major technical bottlenecks of this production route are the low solar-to-chemical energy conversion efficiency and photostability of photoelectrodes. Our research group is actively designing novel nanostructured photoelectrodes using semiconductors, carbon materials, and polymers with further modifications using metal and non-metal doping, photosensitizers, and co-catalysts that could alleviate these technical bottlenecks. Whilst we also seek to understand the fundamentals of photophysics and photochemistry in the photoelectrodes that we designed through advanced characterisations using the state-of-the-art synchrotron facilities.

• ENG1002 - Engineering Design: Cleaner, Safer, Smarter
• CHE2162 - Material and Energy Balances
• CHE2163 - Heat and Mass Transfer
• CHE2164 - Thermodynamics 1
• CHE4161 - Engineer in Society
• CHE4170 - Design Project
• CHE4172 - Nanotechnology and Materials 2
• CHE5885 - Principles and Practices for Sustainable Development