e-mail: joon [dot] chuah [at] u [dot] nus [dot] edu
EDUCATION
DISSERTATIONS
WORK EXPERIENCE
RESEARCH INTERESTS
From my days as a clueless undergraduate, I have been working on the subject of water. For my Bachelor's degree, I worked with the Forest Research Institute of Malaysia to investigate the effects of forest clearing to the quality of stream water. As a civil and environmental engineer, I have planned and designed drainage systems and waterways in Singapore, Malaysia and Brunei. I was inspired to come back to school by a water-related poem by Coleridge. For my Master's degree, I cultured microbes that are capable of degrading carcinogenic wastes in wastewater.
Now, for my PhD dissertation, I am screening the drinking water resources (surface and groundwater) of Northern Thailand for potentially health-threatening contaminants. These include biological agents of waterborne diseases like Cryptosporidium and Giardia to the naturally occurring sources like fluoride in groundwater derived from underlying bedrocks.