AIT faculty wins Thailand Frontier Researcher Award for featuring in top 1 per cent of highly cited papers

          Dr. P. Abdul Salam of the Asian Institute of Technology (AIT) has won the Thomson Reuters Thailand Frontier Researcher Award for 2016. The award was granted "in recognition of pioneering a new frontier in research, based on core papers comprising the world's top 1% of Highly Cited Papers in the field of Engineering."
          Dr. Salam, who serves as Associate Professor in Energy field of study at AIT's School of Environment, Resources and Development (SERD), received the award certificate during the Innovation Forum organized by Thomson Reuters and Office of Higher Education Commission (OHEC), Thailand. on 25 August 2016. He also presented his research activities at AIT. The certificate was jointly awarded by the OHEC Secretary General Aporn Kanvong, and Arto Valio, Vice President, ASEAN & North Asia, Intellectual Property and Science, Thomson Reuters.
          The research paper was based on the research work with Dr. Salam's doctoral student at AIT, Dr. Jakkapong Udomsirichakorn, and it focuses on the production of Hydrogen from biomass and municipal solid waste. "Biomass is an important renewable energy source, and our research interest in on the development of efficient and environmentally sustainable biomass conversion technology," Dr. Salam said.
          He mentioned that AIT's research in this field began in the 1980's with the late Prof. Sribas C. Bhattacharya, and currently the institute is working on pyrolysis, combustion, gasification, densification and biofuel production. "We are working on the frontier of this technology including tar reduction from synthesis gas and hydrogen production through biomass gasification," Dr. Salam added.
          Eleven researchers from various fields including medicine, engineering, physics, mathematics, and molecular biology hailing from AIT, Chulalongkorn University, Mahidol University, Chiang Mai University, Kasetsart University, National for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (BIOTEC), Piyavate Hospital and King Mongkut's University of Technology Thonburi (KMUTT) received certificates at the award ceremony.
          The Innovation Forum focused on global innovation trends, role of leading universities in ASEAN and their collaboration with commercial entities, and innovation among large corporations. A report on "ASEAN: The Emerging Research and Innovation Hub" was also released on the occasion.
          Photo caption: Dr P. Abdul Salam