The “Tong Leong Lim Pre-Doctoral Prize” awarded to Mr. Rungrot is
presented annually in memory of Tong Leong Lim, who ranked as the top
student in his pre-doctoral examination. He received his Ph.D. in
electrical engineering in 1976 under Professor George
Turin.
Mr. Rungrot won the prize for being the Electrical Engineering and
Computer Science (EECS) student who achieved the highest distinction in
the pre-doctoral examination. Awardees were recognized recently at the
annual EECS Student Awards ceremony.
The AIT alumnus began his Ph.D. program in Electrical Engineering
& Computer Sciences at UC Berkeley in autumn 2009. He plans to
focus his doctoral dissertation on printed electronics using gravure
printing. The scope of his work covers both theoretical modeling of
micro-scale print and experiments rationalizing the concepts.
Mr. Rungrot, who was an advisee of Prof. Joydeep Dutta during his
master’s studies, said AIT was special place for learning. In an
electronic interview from California, he said AIT has excellent
professors, students, and a nice environment. “It was the first
institute to give me an opportunity to study and work with people from
totally different cultures. This helped open my mind to learn various
ways to work and create many novel ideas,” the Thai national
said.
After he graduates from Berkeley, Mr. Rungrot said he would
prefer working in academia or industries where he could continue to
explore research on challenging engineering problems, with
semiconductor devices as his primary area of interest.
Asked what he remembered most from his study days at AIT, Mr. Runrot
said: “We always worked extremely hard at AIT, but also played hard
with our friends. We never worked alone, we were a family. It was an
unforgettable memory to be a student at AIT.”