Sung Hee Joo

Sung Hee Joo, Ph.D., serves as the Director of the Environmental Engineering Program at Metropolitan State University of Denver. She specializes in environmental nanotechnology, chemical nanoscience, advanced methods for treating new environmental pollutants, innovative water and wastewater treatment, and how contaminants move and break down the environment. 

In addition to teaching, Joo is working with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory on a project to put post-consumer recycled plastics to use in new products. Notably, she co-authored “Environmental dynamics of metal oxide nanoparticles in heterogeneous systems: A review,” featured in the Journal of Hazardous Materials. Additionally, her contributions extend to publications such as “Climate-Induced Pandemics in the Plastisphere,” published in the National Academy of Science Letters journal. Currently, Joo is actively researching antibiotic resistance in bacteria that grow on microplastics in both aquatic and terrestrial environments. 

With more than 20 years of experience in environmental engineering and sciences, Joo has garnered both national and international recognition. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including the EPA’s Science and Technological Achievement Award, Younger Chemist Leadership Development Award from the American Chemical Society, and grants from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Energy, and NASA.

Before joining MSU Denver, Joo served as an environmental engineering professor at the University of Miami and an affiliate of the Dr. John T. McDonald Biomedical Nanotechnology Institute. 

Joo earned both her Doctorate in Environmental Engineering and Master of Science from the University of New South Wales and completed her postdoctoral training in Chemical and Environmental Engineering at Yale University.