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Main Page Contact Francisco Duque, 912.961.3173 For Immediate Release
Visiting Professor Helps Forge Ties Between AASU and Thai University(Savannah, GA, May 28, 2007) Sanpawat Kantabutra, assistant professor of computer science at Chiang Mai University in Thailand, spent the spring semester 2007 at Armstrong Atlantic State University as a visiting professor teaching courses on theory of computation and the Internet. Kantabutra, known to his campus colleagues as "Bobby," came to Armstrong Atlantic as part of a cooperation agreement between AASU and Chiang Mai University. Kantabutra received his master's and Ph.D. from Syracuse University and Tufts University. Prior to his visit to Savannah, he was unfamiliar with the culture in the southeastern United States. "My experience has been with the American culture in the Northeast," he said. "I think people and the culture in the south are different from what I am used to. People here smile to me when they walk past. They are friendlier." As a professor at Armstrong Atlantic, Kantabutra found that American students in general are more eager to ask questions than their Thai counterparts. Outside of class he worked on research with AASU's School of Computing Professor Ray Greenlaw. A paper they co-authored was accepted for presentation at two conferences in China and Thailand. But it wasn't all work. Kantabutra and his wife Saranya got to know other faculty members in the School of Computing and they had the opportunity to travel a bit around the region. "Dr. Greenlaw had taken us to several places in Georgia and South Carolina whenever he became available. We would like to take this opportunity to thank them all for making our trip here most pleasurable." Kantabutra's focus of research is "complexity" and that can be roughly described as trying to find the degree of difficulty of certain problems in computation. "I also work in designing methods of solving computational problems more efficiently," he said. Kantabutra is chair of the executive committee of the Ph.D. program at Chiang Mai University's Department of Computer Science. Greenlaw, who was awarded a 2005-2006 Senior Fulbright Fellowship to lecture at Chiang Mai University, spearheaded the cooperation between the two institutions. The cooperation agreement between AASU and Chiang Mai extends to all areas of the universities. This May, for example, students and faculty members in the Armstrong Atlantic nursing department traveled to Chiang Mai University to visit with their counterparts there. |
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