Melanie Ooi


Melanie Ooi is an instrumentation and measurement engineer and associate professor in the School of Engineering at the University of Waikato, where she also serves as assistant dean. Her research couples advanced instrumentation with machine-vision and computational-intelligence methods, and her test-data techniques have been adopted by multinational semiconductor companies.

Early life and education

Ooi received her PhD in electronic engineering from Monash University in 2011.

Career

After academic appointments at Monash University and Heriot-Watt University Malaysia, Ooi joined Unitec Institute of Technology in 2017 and moved to the University of Waikato the following year.
She leads projects that apply hyperspectral imaging and tailored LED illumination for the real-time detection of invasive weeds such as ragwort, gorse and blackberry, enabling precision herbicide application in dairy pastures.
Ooi's frameworks for analytical propagation of measurement uncertainty have been incorporated into the South African National Accreditation System’s guideline TG 50-02.
In 2026, Ooi was appointed as a full professor at the University of Waikato.

Professional service

She is a senior member of the IEEE, served on the Administrative Committee of the IEEE Instrumentation & Measurement Society, and was secretary of its Technical Committee on Fault-Tolerant Measurement Systems. Ooi is also the youngest woman ever elected fellow of the Institution of Engineering and Technology.

Awards

Selected works