Draft:Shuang-Ling Chong

Shuang-Ling Chong (nee Cheng) is a Chinese-American chemist known for her work in the testing and evaluation of bridge coatings. Born in Shanghai, China, Chong received a B.S. in Chemistry from National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan in 1964 and a Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from Rutgers University in 1969, with Prof. Sidney Toby as her thesis advisor.

Dr. Chong was a research scientist for the US Department of Energy before serving as the head of the Paint & Corrosion Laboratory at the Turner-Fairbank Highway Research Center at the US Federal Highway Administration. The Paint and Corrosion Laboratory "develops innovative cyclic laboratory test methods for evaluating bridge coating performance and highly reproducible techniques for evaluating coating failures."

The US Government Accountability Office estimated that bridge damage due to corrosion cost the US $13.6 billion annually. Three major failures in a list of bridge failures cite corrosion as a factor.

Chong’s notable contributions towards combating corrosion on bridges include:

1.	She was one of the first to develop a freeze-thaw testing cycle which improved the international testing standard for coatings (ISO 20340, later ISO 12944-9).

2.	She developed a scribe, expose, and measure method for quantifying corrosion-resistance of coatings (ASTM Standard D7087-05A, later ASTM D1654-08).

3.	She also discovered that excessive particle size in zinc additives leads to premature paint failure, which helped lead corrosion experts to consider maximum particle size in addition to minimum overall zinc concentration.