KOH Ming Joo

KOH Ming Joo

Associate Professor, Deputy Head (Research), Dean's Chair Professor (2024-2027)

KOH Ming Joo

Personal Web Page

Ph.D. and Postdoc in Organic Chemistry, Boston College, MA, 2018; B.Sc. (Hons) First Class in Chemistry & Biological Chemistry, Nanyang Technological University, 2012.

Contact Information:

Office: S9-14-01D

Tel: (65)-6601-7489

Fax: (65)-6779-1691

Email: chmkmj@nus.edu.sg

Research

ORCID: 0000-0002-2534-4921
ResearcherID: GOV-7124-2022
Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com.sg/citations?user=f1n6bRcAAAAJ&hl=en

 

Recognition and Achievements

 

Research Interests

 

Chemical manufacturing is one of the key pillars of the global economy and plays a crucial role in the modern human society. Chemical catalysis is an indispensable tool to promote reactions that enable access to various classes of chemicals, ranging from small-molecule medicines to polymeric materials. Despite considerable advances made in this area, much of it depends on the use of exorbitant and scarce noble metals (such as palladium) to prepare catalysts. Considering the rapidly dwindling abundance of precious metals, this approach cannot continue much longer. More industries have begun an earnest search for sustainable and cost-effective alternatives that are not subject to devastating fluctuations caused by price speculation, a well-known attribute of the precious metal market.

Furthermore, such precious metal-derived catalysts are only capable of mediating a limited range of reactions. As a result, longer synthetic sequences often have to be employed to convert a starting material to the desired target product. Unfortunately, each step in a chemical synthesis process consumes energy, resources and time, and generates waste (spent carbon-based solvents and other by-products) that has to be treated or incinerated. Based on the National Environment Agency (NEA) statistics, about 27,500,000 litres of spent solvents are collected annually in Singapore and subsequently used as supplementary fuel for toxic waste incinerators! Consequently, this leads to more CO2 and other toxic emissions that contribute to global warming, climate change, rising sea levels and other undesirable environmental problems. A lengthy and inefficient chemical synthesis process also means that manpower costs inevitably rise due to a greater demand for workers to carry out the tasks.

To address the aforementioned challenges, our group focuses on the research of sustainable catalysis, where we develop catalyst systems derived mainly from abundant base metals such as iron and nickel. Our efforts have led to the discovery of new multi-tasking and energy-efficient catalysts that are capable of mediating unprecedented chemical transformations, which significantly enhance the efficiency and shorten the steps required to access a target chemical product. These catalysts are employed in innovative approaches to transform cheap and abundant feedstock chemicals to value-added products with lower carbon footprint.

 

Research Highlight

Jiang, Y.; Wei, Y.; Zhou, Q.-Y.; Sun, G.-Q; Fu, X.-P.; Levin, N.; Zhang, Y.; Liu, W.-Q.; Song, X.; Mohammed, S.; Davis, B. G.; Koh, M. J. Direct Radical Functionalization of Native Sugars. Nature 2024, DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-07548-0.

Teaching Contributions AY2023/2024

 

Representative Publications