IN A MOVE to drive forward science, technology and innovation in Thailand, the “6-6-10” strategic plan has been announced by the Science and Technology Development Agency (NSTDA).

The strategy focuses on six research pillars, six frontiers of research and 10 technology development groups. The NTSDA will focus its attention on the strategy in collaboration with other organisations and the universities in an effort to make real-life changes and improve the country’s economy, it announced.

The six research pillars include the current five priority research areas supported by NSTDA: bioscience and biotechnology, nano-science and nano-technology, electronics and information technology, material and manufacturing technology, and energy technology. Added to the mix is “agenda-based research” to address the country’s current needs.

The agenda-based research will include  niche research such as dual-use technology, rail and modern transport, medical devices and assistive technology to aid the disabled.

The six frontiers of research include the cutting edge of technological inquiry, and were picked to help address the new 20-year national strategy. They are quantum computing, bionics, nano robotics, terahertz, DNA data storage, and atomic precision bio imaging and plant electric circuits.

Meanwhile, the 10 technology development groups involve the targeted industries with direct and tangible impacts on the country’s economy and competitive advantages. They are biochemicals, cosmeceuticals, biopharmaceuticals, precision medicine, medical devices and implants, food and feed, precision agriculture, mobility and logistics, energy, and dual-use defence.

Narong Sirilertworakul, president of NSTDA, said that to drive the six frontier areas and 10 technology development groups, a national science and technology infrastructure is required as an enabler of science, technology, and innovation research and development.

The specific required national science and technology infrastructure includes the National Biobank Centre, Genome Research Centre of Thailand, Thailand Super Computer Centre, Centre for Cyber-Physical Systems, and Centre for Life Cycle Assessment.

“NSTDA is transforming from the national science and technology development centre into one of the key drivers of the national science, technology, and innovation enablers. With the research and development capability and technology management experience of NSTDA, we are confident that we can support and expand real-world economic impact research, in order to help drive the country’s economy and competitiveness,” said Narong.

The NSTDA aims to create a Bt50 billion economic impact in 2019, which is five times larger than the agency’s R&D spending of Bt10 billion for that year.

In 2018, NSTDA created Bt45 billion worth of science, innovation, and technology R&D impact on the country’s economy, he noted..

Last year alone, NSTDA transferred science, innovation and technology to industry through 261 projects and 335 organisations that created an economic impact of Bt45 billion. It also encouraged Bt14 billion of investments in science, innovation and technology in the services and manufacturing sectors, said Narong.

Chai Wutiwiwatchai, director of the National Electronics and Computer Technology Centre (Nectec) said that in the era of artificial intelligence (AI) and Big Data, the country needs to have a national super-computer centre to support advanced sciences, innovation and technology R&D. Nectec is working on establishing such a centre over the next three years. To be located at the Thailand Science Park, The National Super Computer Centre, will have a budget of about Bt800 million from 2019 to 2021.

Moreover, Chai said, to integrate the power of the researches that Nectec is keen on, there is also the need for a cyber-physical centre that would integrate and combine related research including into sensors, the Internet of Things (IoT) and AI. Part of the national S&T infrastructure, the Cyber-Physical Centre would over the next three years aim to encourage participation of 50 organisations both private and government, as well as educational institutes.

AI a key area

“AI and Big Data is the next big thing, so Nectec also has the Thai People Map and Analytics Platform (TAMAP) with the aim to collect citizens’ data such as ID number, address, and career as well as health, finances and welfare. This citizen data will be used to drive Thailand to information-based policy decision-making,” said Chai.

Moreover, the National Metal and Material Technology Centre under NSTDA recently joined hands with Japan’s New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organisation (NEDO) and Teijin Nakashima Medical. The latter is a Japanese developer of knee prosthetics. The grouping will co-invest, co-research and co-develop to further improve knee prosthesis targeted to Asian people.

MTEC’s researchers had been transferred R&D knowledge held by NEDO for the design and development of knee prostheses, along with a Bt20-million machine to test durability of prosthetics. As a result, Teijin Nakashima Medical delivered a commercialised product called “Future Knee” to the Japanese market. It can help 200 patients a year.

NSTDA is also involved in helping establish a joint venture company linking a Thai company and Teijin Nakashima Medical. They aim to encourage the local development of advanced medical machines, as well as to be the key mechanism in R&D to drive the industrial supply chain.

Additional, the Electrical and Electronic Products Testing Centre (PTEC) has set up a testing lab for portable-sized batteries of 600 kilowatts. They can boast Daimler and the Thonburi Automotive Assembly Plant as customers. Daimler will invest in developing the battery assembly plant in Thailand, which is scheduled to commence operations in February. The next month, Daimler will send a battery to be tested at PTEC. It is Daimler’s first battery assembly plant in Asean region and the fourth in the world, and is tangible proof that Thailand has entered the electric vehicle industry.

According to Sunita Bottse, managing director of Supernap Thailand, a major data centre provider, the number of Thailand’s mobile device users has reached 46 million out of the country’s 69 million population, while the number of Internet users is currently around 27 million, up 24 per cent from the previous year.

The widespread use of social media platforms, such as Facebook, Line, Twitter and Instagram, coupled with the high growth rate of e-commerce, social commerce and mobile commerce platforms have led to a huge increase in personal and other data needing secured storage facilities to meet regulatory, privacy and other legal requirements.

For example, Thai banks have to be in compliance with the Bank of Thailand’s regulations on data residency and privacy. Bottse said Supernap Thailand’s data centre at Hemaraj Industrial Estate 2 in Chon Buri province is regarded as one of the most secure facilities in Asean and meets the so-called Tier IV design and operation standards.

The joint venture between Supernap International and Thai partners has already seen about US$100 million (Bt3.28 trillion) invested in the first stage of its Thai facility. Another $300 million is earmarked for further expansion in Thailand, where the current facility has a total land area of 120,000 square metres.

The first-stage facility has two data halls with a combined capacity of 20-megawatts built on an area of 21,000 square metres. The power capacity is equivalent to the electricity used by 6,000 households.

Supernap holds many patents for co-location data centre designs and mission critical operations, including those for dual independent roofs to withstand up to 322 km/h winds and seven layers of physical security surveillance.

One of the most advanced facilities in Asean As one of the most advanced facilities in Asean countries, it is served by eight neutral carriers for global high-speed connectivity required by enterprises in the digital economy as well as by electronic government and other public services.

Bottse said Supernap Thailand aims to tap the data storage demand in the Eastern Economic Corridor (EEC), which covers Chon Buri, Rayong and Chachoengsao, where the government has been offering tax and other incentives for foreign and Thai investors to launch digital and other new technology ventures.

Previously, Japanese and other foreign investors were worried about flooding in some areas of Thailand, so Supernap Thailand chose its site in Chon Buri at 110 metres above sea level. High-security data centres also have to ensure that there is no downtime of the facilities, which need power redundancy and other features to meet the Tier IV standards.

Since its opening in the last quarter of 2017, Supernap Thailand has acquired clients for half of its capacity with the remaining leases expected to be sold out in two years.

The Thailand 4.0 initiative has led to a rapid growth of the digital economy along with more use of Internet of Things (IoT) and artificial intelligence (AI) in various sectors, especially banking, insurance and other financial services.

For example, many Thai banks have moved their customers to mobile platforms and provide pre-approval on mortgage and other loan requests online, resulting in the use of analytic and massive personal data storage.

The market for data storage has expanded 30 per cent over the past year alone, with a hybrid cloud-based model emerging as a preferred choice for on- and off-premise facilities.

For banks, some data are stored on premises, while non-core applications are stored on the cloud service. Supernap Thailand has a number of cloud partners, including AWS and Azure.

According to Thai law, some primary banking and other data cannot be stored outside Thailand.

Poramin, the founder and chief executive officer of Satang Corporation, is one of the pioneers in the cryptocurrency business in Thailand. He first got involved with the virtual currency while he was a student in the Security Informatics Master’s programme at Johns Hopkins University in 2014.

Poramin created Vertcoin, which became the world’s fourth-most valuable cryptocurrency in February 2014, reaching a US$20-million market cap within a week of its launch. Not long before, the bitcoin price had hit $1,300, attracting his attention and leading him to explore how he could participate in the technology.

“When cryptocurrency and blockchain were getting to be known more by Thai people, it was a good opportunity for me to follow my dream,” Poramin told The Nation Weekend in an interview.

The 30-year-old entrepreneur is also the world’s first person to implement stealth addresses in QT-Wallets, improving cryptocurrency anonymity.

As a blockchain enthusiast, he wanted to work in the blockchain development field after graduating in the US. However, there were few jobs at the time that centred on blockchain development.

Undaunted, he returned to his hometown and pursued a far more challenging ambition – launching his own company to develop blockchain technology for Thailand.

“It’s not just about money, it’s about something that I learnt at Johns Hopkins and that can help my country to become a leader in the blockchain industry,” Poramin once said on his company’s website http://www.zcoin.io.

However, at the time he came back to Thailand, the junta government was focussed on cyberwarfare and so Poramin applied for a job as a military officer IT expert in the cyberwarfare department.

At the beginning, Sub-lieutenant Poramin was excited about doing his duty as a cyberwarfare analyst.

In the event of malware breaching cybersecurity systems, it was his job to find out where it came from, how and when the attack took place, and who had released the bug. But over time he got bored with the emphasis on paperwork.

New direction

Poramin quit and in 2016 developed Zcoin, an open source, decentralised coin that focuses on achieving financial privacy for its users while they are transacting on blockchain. The approach was intended to ensure the egalitarian distribution of its coins.

With a claim to fame of having been created by a Thai citizen,  Zcoin is among the top 100 of its kind, according to market capitalisation. It pioneered the use of the “Zerocoin” protocol, which uses zero-knowledge proofs in its privacy scheme to break transaction links between transactions. It was also the first to go live with the “Dandelion” protocol, which hides the originating IP of a sender without the use of TOR or VPNs.

Zcoin has been live since September 2016 and is traded on the world’s top cryptocurrency exchanges, such as Binance, Bittrex and Huobi.

It now trades at Bt160, down from its peak of Bt5,000 per coin, according to its creator.

In 2017, Poramin founded Satang, a financial services company, with Bt50 million in registered capital.

The company was founded with an aim to become the go-to digital asset service provider. Operating within the existing legal framework, it is highly trustworthy, says Poramin, and adheres to international security standards.

The current service from Satang provides an exchange market for trading cryptocurrency on Satang Pro, formerly known as TDAX.

Among five exchanges in Thailand, TDAX is the second largest with daily trade volumes of cryptocurrencies estimated at Bt100 million and about 30,000 investors trading daily, he said.

So far, 18 cryptocurrencies are kept on the trading market but only five currencies are trading, according to the CEO.

With the aim to encourage people to use more cryptocurrency in their daily lives, Satang plans to launch Satang App and Satang Shop next year to help facilitate people in using the coins to sell or buy goods online, Poramin added.

Satang App is an e-wallet that would allow consumers to make payments via PromptPay infrastructure.

Satang Shop is an online shop that enables cryptocurrency payments.

Both features will enable e-commerce vendors to accept cryptocurrencies, and online buyers to pay with them. And using it is simple, involving registering as a member, Poramin said.

If the vendors are confident in the value of the coins they could keep them for as long as they want or they could convert cryptocurrencies into cash through Satang Pro, he said.

“Our goal is to make 3 per cent of the total Thai population, or 2 million people, use digital coins in their real lives. I want them to spend it to buy goods or products, not just use it for speculation,” he said.

Poramin also plans to launch asset-backed cryptocurrencies in the future.

The value of coins now depends on supply and demand but if the coins have assets backing them up – for example, a condominium – it will attract more people to own them as it would be more reliable than just speculation, he explained.

Taking the technology further

In addition to cryptocurrency, Poramin is passionate about blockchain, an open, distributed ledger that can efficiently record transactions between two parties and in a verifiable and permanent way.

His thesis at Johns Hopkins was about how blockchain could be used for money transfers in which the identities of the sender and the recipients would not be known to people outside the transaction, nor would efforts to trace the transfer be possible.

His technology was different to that of the “digital gold” bitcoin, a decentralised digital currency without a central bank or single administrator. That currency can be sent user-to-user on the peer-to-peer bitcoin network without the need for intermediaries, and people can still know who is involved in the transactions.

Poramin was a key player in the recent introduction of blockchain in Thai politics, when the Democrat Party’s leader was for the first time chosen in a primary election involving more than 120,000 voters.

Due to distrust among the party’s candidates, Poramin last month helped the Democrats tap the potential of this new technology, which offers increased transparency along with other benefits.

The party’s primary vote for its leader utilised the Zcoin blockchain, also marking Thailand’s first large-scale electronic voting with two sets of data involved: identification documents and vote tallies, he explained.

In his view, Thailand has the potential to utilise the advanced technology in a national election. It would be possible to see it implemented in the next few years, if pressure by voters and candidates increased.

He said election organisers could develop electronic-voting machines and use blockchain to store the voting data.

“I believe we’ve achieved a huge milestone in our country’s political history and hope other political parties or even governments, not just in Thailand but elsewhere in the region, can look to using blockchain technology in enabling large scale e-voting,” Poramin said.

The event will be held from Friday to December 31 at True Branding Shop ICONSIAM, the company said in a press release issued on Friday.

Vichaow Rakphongphairoj, True Corporation president, said: “TrueMove H, in partnership with our global partners including leading manufacturers of telecommunication devices, has succeeded in developing and demonstrating continuous trials of 5G technology since late 2017. “Currently, TrueMove H was granted permission from the NBTC to undergo a demonstration of our 5G technology using the 28-GHz spectrum which is considered an important stepping stone in connecting Thais to the digital world, changing people’s daily lifestyles and, most importantly, revolutionising industrial operations through a more concrete and sustainable approach.

As the leading mobile network provider in Thailand, TrueMove H operates diverse frequencies, ranging from 850/900/1800 to 2100 MHz.”

“We strongly believe that we are ready to lead the Thai people towards a complete digital lifestyle in the 5G era through our demonstration of 5G performance in a real-world environment at this event,” he added.

“We aim at convincing people that this event is the ‘Bestination’ that provides the best opportunity for everyone to learn and experience our various advanced technologies that meet all types of interests and content ranging from entertainment, sports, model cities and future transport systems as well as robotic and automated technologies, which are expected to reshape Thai people’s lifestyles and revolutionize future operation systems.”

The enhanced Inspiron laptops and 2-in-1s are built with a combination of beautiful designs, superior materials and top performance dedicated to deliver a device for every function and user, Dell said in a press statement.

Dell’s commitment to thoughtful design and truly immersive cinematic experiences on the PC continues with this generation of products. Launched at CES 2018, Dell Cinema is the combination of several cutting-edge technologies all working in concert to give the viewer an immersive, captivating experience on their PCs. Dell Cinema is available across the new Inspiron products.

Every Dell Consumer PC also comes with Dell Mobile Connect , which allows users wireless access to their smartphones on their Dell PCs. The software brings a new level of smartphone-to-PC integration beyond text messages and phone calls to include integration with Android and iOS apps notifications, such as WhatsApp messages, calendar reminders and more.

“We pride ourselves in always bringing the latest innovation to consumers and iterating when new advancements are made available and we are very excited with the updated design, cinematic experiences and better performance that our new Inspiron 5000 laptops will bring for them,” said Anothai Wettayakorn, Vice President, Dell EMC Indo-china. “Consumers today want products that are easy to set up and ready to use once it is out of the box. They want to create and share content between devices regardless of operating system or form factor with ease. At Dell, we strive to help customers interact with what matters most to them to meet the performance needs of today and tomorrow.”

Inspiron 5000 2-in-1s and laptops – flexibility and function at incredible value

The Inspiron 14 5000 2-in-1 (5482) boasts many of the top line enhancements of the 7000 series, including thermal routing and narrow borders. This product offers new Intel 8th Generation U Series processors, choice, flexibility and value to fit the varied needs of today’s consumers. It also includes a USB Type-C port with power delivery and display support, for the first time standard in the Inspiron 5000 series, and an optional NVIDIA® GeForce® MX130 discrete graphics card.

The new Inspiron 14-inch laptop (5480) is available in silver color and a three-sided narrow border completes the stylish look. A USB Type-C port provides power delivery and display support, and an optional fingerprint reader is available on the power button. This product boasts a wealth of features, such as storage options including SSDs and dual drives, optional discrete graphics up to NVIDIA® GeForce® MX150 Graphics, and an optional backlit keyboard.

Pricing & Availability

The new Inspiron systems are now available through Dell and its authorized partners: