His research area is in 3D Printing & Rapid Prototyping or Additive Manufacturing. He is the foremost expert in Singapore in this area and was awarded the prestigious International Freeform and Additive Manufacturing Excellence (FAME) Award in 2018. Prof Chua is also the most published and most cited scientist in “Rapid Prototyping / Additive Manufacturing” (3D Printing) according to the Web of Science. He has published in more than 500 international journals, conference papers, books, book chapters and patents.

Professor Chua is an active contributor to the additive manufacturing (AM) field for over 29 years. He began his journey into AM in 1990. Now, his ongoing research are concerned mainly with powder bed fusion processes such as selective laser sintering and selective laser melting, bioprinting, electronics printing, 4D printing and food printing. He has made a number of major contributions in these areas. Specifically, his re-design and re-modelling of additive manufacturing processes for fabrication of innovative products and devices such tissue engineering scaffolds are highly regarded by the scientific community.