Dr Chooi (PhD, Applied Biology and Biotechnology) worked at University of California, Los Angeles (2009-2013) focusing on the molecular genetic and biochemical basis of secondary metabolite biosynthesis in fungi. He moved to the Research School of Biology at the Australian National University in 2013 after winning a prestigious ARC Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA). In 2015, he joined the faculty at The University of Western Australia and took up a lectureship in the School of Chemistry & Biochemistry. His current research is focusing on secondary metabolite biosynthesis of fungi, understanding secondary metabolite roles in plant and animal fungal disease development, enzyme and drug discovery by genome mining. His work spans the field of genomics and genetics, synthetic biology, chemical biology and natural product chemistry. In 2016, Dr Chooi was awarded the prestigious ARC Future Fellowship to continue his research in this exciting interdisciplinary field.

ARC Discovery Project (2020-2023) - Fungal Ribosomally Synthesised and Post-translationally Modified Peptides, Chooi, Y-H, Solomon, PS

Cooperative Research Centre Projects CRC-P (2018-2021) - BioAustralis: Towards the Future, Lacey, E; Page, S; Piggott, AP; Chooi, Y-H

ARC Discovery Project (2017-2019) - Two new phytotoxins in Septoria nodorum blotch: Biosynthesis and functions, Chooi, Y-H, Solomon, PS

ARC Future Fellowship (2016-2019) - Uncovering the Hidden Secondary Metabolite Biosynthetic Potential of Fungi, Chooi, Y-H

ARC Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA) (2013-2015) - A Synthetic Biology Approach for Mining the Secondary Metabolomes of Fungal Phytopathogens, Chooi, Y-H

- Secondary metabolite biosynthesis

- Genome mining of bioactive natural products

- Fungal pathogen-host interactions

- Synthetic biology of antibiotic production

- Biocalytic enzyme discovery