Laboratory of Microbial Ecology, Universiti Malaya

WELCOME to our Lab website.  We are interested in microbial ecology, a branch of ecology that studies abundance and diversity of microorganisms, microbial process rates, and the interaction of microorganisms and the environment.  My students and I study various types of habitats e.g. coastal waters, estuaries, urban man-made lakes, wastewater treatment systems and even solid surfaces. My official curriculum vitae can be found here.

I am affiliated with the Institute of Biological Sciences, Faculty of Science, Universiti Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. I am also co-affiliated with the Institute of Ocean and Earth Sciences, Universiti Malaya.

I teach the following subjects: Biostatistics, Bacteriology, Microbial Ecology, Marine and Estuarine Microbiology. You may check some of the lectures out at the following youtube channel. I have also published a small ebook (Practical Bacteriology) that covers the essential skills in Bacteriology. Among the topics covered are optimisation of isolation and culture of bacteria, standard guidelines to enumerating culturable bacteria via spread plating, pour plating, membrane filtration method, most probably number (MPN) and also enumeration of bacteria via direct counting. I also included the different approaches to bacterial identification e.g., dichotomous key, blunderbuss approaches, and 16S rRNA sequencing approach. You may find them on most online ebook stores (Rakuten Kobo, Amazon, Lulu etc).

To obtain more information about the types of research we are doing, you can check out our publication list on my research page. For more information about post-graduate degree application, please go to the Universiti Malaya page.

I could be contacted at the following address:

Associate Professor

Dr. Lee Choon Weng

Laboratory of Microbial Ecology,

Institute of Biological Sciences,

Universiti Malaya,

50603 KUALA LUMPUR,

Malaysia.

Tel: +60-3-79675841

Fax: +60-3-79675908 

Email: lee0@um1.edu2.my3 (remove 0,1,2,3)

Dr Bong CW joined the lab as a senior lecturer, and has recently been promoted to Associate Professor! Her official CV can be found here.

Ongoing research interest (updated 20241218):

Sediment flux in mangrove waters

Factors affecting Escherichia coli and Enterococcus spp. as faecal indicators

Beneficial soil microbes

Factors affecting dynamics of vibrios in coastal waters

Bioremediation of urban lakes

Students interested in pursuing  higher degrees at my lab, please send me an email attached with your curriculum vitae with photo and possible research title. Research projects should be related to microbial ecology.

Scholarships are generally available for Malaysian students with good academic results (usually with a CGPA of 3.5 and above). International students with scholarships that wish to pursue a Ph.D degree are also welcomed. Application forms and further information are available here. 

We also provide analytical services in microbiology and water (freshwater and seawater) chemistry and water quality testing for other researchers, medical, food and wastewater industry. Anyone interested in engaging our services, please email me.