Dr. Chui Pin Leaw is an Associate Professor at the Institute of Ocean and Earth Sciences (IOES), University of Malaya. Her research falls in the field of marine protistology and phycology, focusing on the studies of Harmful Algal Blooms (HABs). Her research areas span from taxonomy, molecular systematics, and evolution to the genetics and toxigenesis of harmful microalgae.

 

She began her academic career at Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (UNIMAS) in September 2008 as a senior lecturer DS51 of the Faculty of Resource Science and Technology, and a Research Fellow of the Institute of Biodiversity and Environmental Conservation (IBEC). She graduated from the National University of Malaysia (Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, UKM) with a declared major in Marine Science and holds a First Class BSc. (H), and later received her MSc. and a Ph.D. in Marine Science from the same university.

 

She is a member of the professional bodies related to the field of interest, the International Society for the Study of Harmful Algae (ISSHA), the Phycological Society of America (PSA), and the Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS). She is also a UNESCO-IOC/WESTPAC Toxic Marine Organisms project committee member. She is actively involved in the editorial task, being appointed as a reviewer to high impact factor journals (BMC Evolutionary Biology, PlosONE, Harmful Algae, Scientific Reports, etc.), and had served on the editorial board as associate editor to the Elsevier impact factor journal, GENE, and its sister journal PLANTGENE. Chui Pin is involved directly in developing course portfolios and online courses, as well as teaching various undergraduate courses, particularly the core courses of UNIMAS in Molecular Biology. The online learning approach is adopted in her teaching, which gained her an award in 2009 on the UNIMAS Outstanding Online Learning Award for the course Bioinformatics. Throughout her academic career, she has mentored more than 40 undergraduate students (FYP); six Ph.D. students and 16 MSc students have completed their studies under her supervision.