Rate My Professor Khay Fong

Dr. Khay Fong is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Chemistry, Faculty of Science, at Monash University, a position she has held since 2023, when she also became Course Coordinator for the Masters in Green Chemistry and Sustainable Technology. She obtained her PhD in Pharmacy from Monash University in 2013 and a Graduate Certificate in Commercialising Research in 2011. Following her doctorate, Fong secured the Victorian Postdoctoral Research Fellowship (2014-2017), conducting research at ETH Zurich, Switzerland (2014-2015) and returning to Monash in 2016. She was the inaugural recipient of the National Center of Competence in Research in Bio-Inspired Materials Postdoctoral Research Fellowship for Women at the Adolphe Merkle Institute, Université de Fribourg, Switzerland (2017-2018). From 2019 to 2023, she served as Lecturer in Chemistry in the School of Environmental and Life Sciences at the University of Newcastle.

Her research focuses on the self-assembly of amphiphilic molecules into nanostructures and nanoparticles to develop platform technologies for improved medicines and diagnostic tools. Key areas include on-demand drug delivery systems responsive to heat, laser light, pH changes, and digestion, as well as the effects of native biomolecules and the human microbiome on these nanomaterials. Fong also addresses environmental challenges, leading citizen science and student projects on microplastic pollution in Australian and Pacific oceans in collaboration with the Swiss NGO Sail and Explore. She is Director of the Australian Chapter of the Controlled Release Society (AusCRS) and received the Early Career Research Award in 2016. Notable publications encompass "Lipidic drug delivery systems are responsive to the human microbiome" (Caukwell et al., 2025, Journal of Colloid and Interface Science), "Machine learning outperforms humans in microplastic characterization and reveals human labelling errors in FTIR data" (Herb et al., 2025, Journal of Hazardous Materials), "Exploiting salting effects to tune morphology and phase boundaries of lipidic mesophases" (Yu et al., 2026, Journal of Colloid and Interface Science), "Hydrogen Sulfide-Responsive Bicontinuous Nanospheres" (2021, Biomacromolecules), and "Synthesis of 2D Porous Crystalline Materials in Simulated Microgravity" (2021, Advanced Materials).