About
Pai Buabthong
I'm an assistant professor of Physics at Nakhon Ratchasima Rajabhat University. My research interests span from ML to AI for science, where science here includes both natural science (materials property predictions) and social science (disaster management and poverty alleviation)
Previously, I was working with Prof. Nathan S. Lewis at Caltech on surface energetics and defects of protective coatings for photoelectrochemical solar fuel production devices. During my Ph.D., I also worked with Prof. Zachary Ross on synthetic broadband seismic wave generation using generative adversarial networks (GANs)
A brief timeline of my career:
- October 2025 - now
- April 2025 - nowDirector at Nakhon Ratchasima Office of Lifelong Learning (NRLL)- Implement credit bank system for NRRU- Develop short-courses for upskilling and reskilling local workforce- Promote academic services and external affairs
- November 2024 - April 2025Deputy Director at Nakhon Ratchasima Office of Lifelong Learning (NRLL)- Academic services and external affairs
- July 2024 - November 2024Assistant Dean at Faculty of Science and Technology- Evaluation and assessment, public relation, and corporate communication
- May 2023 - April 2024Researcher at Office of Academic Services, Center of Korat Development- Research focus on local development and data-driven poverty alleviation in Nakhon Ratchasima (Korat)- Managed databases and big data projects
- January 2022 - December 2024Machine Learning Researcher/Technical Consultant at Kasikorn Business-Technology Group- Research focused on Thai NLP and knowledge graph
- December 2021 - nowLecturer at Nakhon Ratchasima Rajabhat University
- Sept 2015 - June 2021Ph.D. Research Assistant at California Institute of Technology- Studied defects on ALD TiO2 coatings and corrosion mechanisms of semiconductors- Designed GAN model for generating broadband seismic waveforms for earthquake engineering
- June 2018 - Sept 2018Product Engineer Intern at Lam Research- Studied gas breakdown in the electrostatic chucks (ESCs) used in conductor and dielectric etch instruments- Developed coating materials with increased high-voltage dielectric breakdown
- June 2013 - Sept 2013Research Assistant at Argonne National Laboratory- Developed an interferometric phase noise measurement system for the Short-Pulse X-ray (SPX) project at the Advanced Photon Source
- May 2012-May 2015Mobile App Developer at Scientific Animations without Borders- Created 2D animations covering common health issues- Developed iOS and Android application and designed the database for distributing the animations
Education
California Institute of Technology June 2021
Ph.D. Materials Science, Minor in Computer ScienceCalifornia Institute of Technology June 2018
M.S. Materials ScienceUniversity of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign May 2015
B.S. Physics, Minor in Mathematics
Tech stack
This site is hosted on Vercel, built with Next.js and Tailwind CSS using Tailwind Nextjs Starter Blog.
A huge thanks to Timothy Lin for the minimal, lightweight, and super easy-to-customize blog starter as well as Leo Tuan Anh for some customization ideas.
- See my repository for the source.
Images
All images in this blog are from Unsplash and Flaticon - Thanks for the free resources!