Yuen Poovarawan
Encyclopedia
Yuen Poovarawan is a Thai computer scientist
Computer scientist
A computer scientist is a scientist who has acquired knowledge of computer science, the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and their application in computer systems....

. He currently holds the positions of associate professor in the Department of Computer Engineering and Vice President for Information Technology at Kasetsart University
Kasetsart University
Kasetsart University is a public university in Thailand and a top-ranked Public University in Thailand. It is ranked No.401-500 in the world by QS. It was also the first agricultural university and the third oldest university in Thailand...

 in Bangkok
Bangkok
Bangkok is the capital and largest urban area city in Thailand. It is known in Thai as Krung Thep Maha Nakhon or simply Krung Thep , meaning "city of angels." The full name of Bangkok is Krung Thep Mahanakhon Amon Rattanakosin Mahintharayutthaya Mahadilok Phop Noppharat Ratchathani Burirom...

, Thailand
Thailand
Thailand , officially the Kingdom of Thailand , formerly known as Siam , is a country located at the centre of the Indochina peninsula and Southeast Asia. It is bordered to the north by Burma and Laos, to the east by Laos and Cambodia, to the south by the Gulf of Thailand and Malaysia, and to the...

. Among his noted contributions are the development of natural language processing
Natural language processing
Natural language processing is a field of computer science and linguistics concerned with the interactions between computers and human languages; it began as a branch of artificial intelligence....

 for the Thai language
Thai language
Thai , also known as Central Thai and Siamese, is the national and official language of Thailand and the native language of the Thai people, Thailand's dominant ethnic group. Thai is a member of the Tai group of the Tai–Kadai language family. Historical linguists have been unable to definitively...

, and the advancement of information technology services in Thailand, particularly the implementation of networking infrastructure at Kasetsart.

Early life and education

Yuen Poovarawan was born on 5 November 1950 in Bangkok
Bangkok
Bangkok is the capital and largest urban area city in Thailand. It is known in Thai as Krung Thep Maha Nakhon or simply Krung Thep , meaning "city of angels." The full name of Bangkok is Krung Thep Mahanakhon Amon Rattanakosin Mahintharayutthaya Mahadilok Phop Noppharat Ratchathani Burirom...

, Thailand
Thailand
Thailand , officially the Kingdom of Thailand , formerly known as Siam , is a country located at the centre of the Indochina peninsula and Southeast Asia. It is bordered to the north by Burma and Laos, to the east by Laos and Cambodia, to the south by the Gulf of Thailand and Malaysia, and to the...

. The third out of six children, he is the elder twin brother of Yong Poovorawan
Yong Poovorawan
Yong Poovorawan is a medical professor in pediatric hepatology at the Faculty of Medicine of Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, Thailand. He is widely noted for his research in the fields of pediatric hepatology, viral hepatitis and virology, and is regarded as a subject expert on the H5N1 avian...

, medical professor at the Faculty of Medicine, Chulalongkorn University
Faculty of Medicine, Chulalongkorn University
The Faculty of Medicine, Chulalongkorn University,the second oldest medical school in Thailand, was established in 1947 in accordance with the wishes of King Ananda Mahidol to educate a sufficient number of medical doctors to satisfy the public's demands. For more than half a century, this medical...

. As a child, his family moved to Nakhon Pathom
Amphoe Mueang Nakhon Pathom
Mueang Nakhon Pathom is the capital district of Nakhon Pathom Province, central Thailand.-History:This area was an ancient city, dating back to pre-historic times. It was the starting point of Buddhism in Dvaravati culture area....

, where he attended Phrapathom Witthayalai School. He graduated Bachelor of Engineering
Bachelor of Engineering
The Bachelor of Engineering is an undergraduate academic degree awarded to a student after three to five years of studying engineering at universities in Armenia, Australia, Bangladesh, Bulgaria, Canada, China, Denmark, Egypt, Finland , Germany, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Jordan, Korea,...

 in electrical engineering
Electrical engineering
Electrical engineering is a field of engineering that generally deals with the study and application of electricity, electronics and electromagnetism. The field first became an identifiable occupation in the late nineteenth century after commercialization of the electric telegraph and electrical...

 from Chulalongkorn University
Chulalongkorn University
Chulalongkorn University is the oldest university in Thailand and is the country's highest ranked university. It now has nineteen faculties and institutes. Regarded as the best and most selective university in Thailand, it consistently attracts top students from around the country...

 in 1972, and completed two engineering master's degrees, also in electrical engineering at Chulalongkorn University, and in industrial engineering
Industrial engineering
Industrial engineering is a branch of engineering dealing with the optimization of complex processes or systems. It is concerned with the development, improvement, implementation and evaluation of integrated systems of people, money, knowledge, information, equipment, energy, materials, analysis...

 at the Asian Institute of Technology
Asian Institute of Technology
The Asian Institute of Technology is an international institution for higher education in engineering, advanced technologies, and management and planning...

, in 1974.

Work

Yuen began his career in 1973 as an instructor in the Department of Electrical Engineering at Kasetsart University
Kasetsart University
Kasetsart University is a public university in Thailand and a top-ranked Public University in Thailand. It is ranked No.401-500 in the world by QS. It was also the first agricultural university and the third oldest university in Thailand...

, where he has since continued working. He began working on software development for microcomputer
Microcomputer
A microcomputer is a computer with a microprocessor as its central processing unit. They are physically small compared to mainframe and minicomputers...

s in 1978, and worked on natural language processing algorithms from 1980. He and his team demonstrated the first interactive text editor for the Thai language
Thai language
Thai , also known as Central Thai and Siamese, is the national and official language of Thailand and the native language of the Thai people, Thailand's dominant ethnic group. Thai is a member of the Tai group of the Tai–Kadai language family. Historical linguists have been unable to definitively...

 in 1981, and released Thai Easy Writer, the first Thai word processing
Word processor
A word processor is a computer application used for the production of any sort of printable material....

 application, the following year.

Yuen was among the proponents for the creation of a standard Thai language system for computers (over twenty had become available by 1984), and vice-chaired the committee for the development of the TIS 620
TIS 620
Thai Industrial Standard 620-2533, commonly referred to as TIS-620, is the most common character set and character encoding for the Thai language. The standard is published by the Thai Industrial Standards Institute , an organ of the Ministry of Industry under the Royal Thai Government, and is...

-2529 character set and its subsequent version, TIS 620-2533.

The Microcomputer Research Laboratory, which Yuen was head of, also developed the Thai Kernel
Kernel (computing)
In computing, the kernel is the main component of most computer operating systems; it is a bridge between applications and the actual data processing done at the hardware level. The kernel's responsibilities include managing the system's resources...

 System, a hardware-independent system designed to promote system-intercompatibility for Thai-language application development, in 1990, but this failed to gain a user base as it lost ground to the expanding Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...

 systems.

In his research, Yuen pioneered the utilization of dictionary databases for Thai word splitting and machine translation
Machine translation
Machine translation, sometimes referred to by the abbreviation MT is a sub-field of computational linguistics that investigates the use of computer software to translate text or speech from one natural language to another.On a basic...

, created the first Thai language thesaurus and developed word and sentence reconstruction methods for use in spell checking applications, among other things. Much of his work was presented at various national and international conferences.

He also played a pivotal role in the development of Kasetsart University's computer network infrastructure, beginning in 1990 and leading to the implementation of Thailand's first fiber-optic university network, and by 2003, wireless LAN
Wireless LAN
A wireless local area network links two or more devices using some wireless distribution method , and usually providing a connection through an access point to the wider internet. This gives users the mobility to move around within a local coverage area and still be connected to the network...

 coverage throughout the university's campus, the largest such network in Southeast Asia. Kasetsart has long been an early adopter of information technology services; its Computer Center, for which Yuen previously served as director, has enjoyed faculty-level status since 1985. He currently serves as the university's vice president for information technology.

Yuen is author of over sixty computer-related textbooks, as well as other academic titles, and has long been regarded as one of the leading computer science experts in Thailand.

Personal life

Yuen is married to Wanna Poovarawan, with two daughters and one son, Nawan, Nanjana and Nutch Poovarawan, respectively. An early adopter of the technology, Yuen began communicating with his children via email in 1994, reaching out when they are abroad and teaching life lessons through analogies often taken from nature. For this, Google
Google
Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...

 named him one of its "web heroes" for its the web is what you make of it campaign promoting the Google Chrome browser.

Awards and recognition

As recognition of his continued work in natural language processing and applied uses of the computer, the National Research Council of Thailand granted Yuen the Outstanding Researcher Award in physical sciences and mathematics in 1996. He had also received the National Research Council Award for innovation in 1983, 1984, 1986, 1987, 1988, 1990 and 1992.

He holds positions on the boards of the Computer Association of Thailand and the National Electronics and Computer Technology Center, and is a member of the National Research Council. He also provides honorary consultative services to other organizations, including the Bureau of the Budget and the Revenue Department. He works with the Institute for the Promotion of Teaching Science and Technology in curricula development for computer teaching, and is Thailand's coordinator for the International Olympiad in Informatics
International Olympiad in Informatics
The International Olympiad in Informatics is an annual computer science competition for secondary school students. The first IOI was held in 1989 in Pravetz, Bulgaria....

.
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