BIO

Kulsawasd (Bo) Jitkajornwanich [pronounced as "kun-swat bo jit-kjorn-wa-nid"] (Ph.D. in Computer Science, 2014, The University of Texas at Arlington) is an assistant professor in the Department of Professional Communication at the College of Media and Communication, Texas Tech University. Building on his work on big (spatial) data analysis, spatio-temporal data modeling and mining concepts, geographic information systems (GIS), NOSQL databases, he is currently conducting computer science (computational and data science, human-AI interactions) research in the domains of social media and communication. His research to date applies computer science and data science techniques to social media analytics, natural language processing (NLP), AI chatbots, misinformation detection, environmental monitoring, precision agriculture, and disaster management. He has more than 50 publications (journal articles, conference proceedings, book chapters, etc.) to date, and has received over 700 citation counts, with an h-index of 14, an i10-index of 20, according to Google Scholar. At Texas Tech University, he founded the "Media Insights Lab" at the College of Media and Communication since 2023.

OVERALL STATEMENT

GOOGLE SCHOLAR PROFILE

EDUCATION

2014 PH.D.

in Computer Scince

Dept. of Computer Science & Engineering, College of Engineering,
The University of Texas at Arlington, Texas, United States
Dissertation: “Analysis and Modeling Techniques for Geo-Spatial and
Spatio-Temporal Datasets”
Received Royal Thai Government Scholarship from Ministry of Higher Education, Science, Research and Innovation of Thailand for Ph.D.
Received the dissertation award in the ‘Information Technology and Communication Arts’ category, National Research Council of Thailand (NRCT) (Thai equivalent of the US NSF).
Specialization: Databases & Information, Communication for/of Artificial Intelligence

2009 M.S.

in Computer Science

Dept. of Computer Science & Engineering, College of Engineering,
The University of Texas at Arlington, Texas, United States
Received Royal Thai Government Scholarship from Ministry of Higher Education, Science, Research and Innovation of Thailand for M.S.
Specialization: Databases, Information, Communication, and Artificial Intelligence

2004 B.S.

in Computer Science

Dept. of Mathematics & Computer Science, Faculty of Science,
Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand
Awarded "magna cum laude" distinction
Senior Project: Teaching Mathematics with Animation on Theory of Sine and Cosine
Specialization: Science Communication and Media

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HIGHLIGHTS

INTERDISCIPLINARY DATA SCIENTIST

Publications on media and communication, disaster management, environment monitoring, precision agriculture, and etc. Won ‘Faculty Contribution to University Research Visibility Award’ from KMITL in 2018.

SOCIAL MEDIA &
BIG DATA

Twitter data, natural language processing/NLP, text analysis for flood warning and crisis communication, published in 2018 IEEE Big Data conference proceedings.

SCIENCE COMMUNICATION

2019 Dissertation award in the ‘Information Technology and Communication Arts’ category from NRCT (Thai equivalent of US NSF); former software engineer at Reuters in Bangkok (in 2005) and London (in 2006).

STUDENT PROJECTS SUPERVISED ON MEDIA & COMM

Computational news text summarization, trend analysis of health misinformation research using topic modeling, sentiment analysis of Tweets and cryptocurrency market, user segmentation using YouTube comments, AI/ML software for speech impaired patients, etc.

EXTERNAL GRANT FROM EUROPEAN UNION

Educational Training Centers for Automation in Thailand” (ETAT 2019-22, EUR 93,464.00), funded by the “Erasmus+” Programme (EuRopean Community Action Scheme for the Mobility of University Students), European Union (http://etat-erasmus.com/)

PROJECTS WITH FEDERAL GOVERNMENT

Defense Industry and Energy Center, Ministry of Defense of Thailand; Geo-Informatics and Space Technology Development Agency, Ministry of Higher Education, Science, Research and Innovation of Thailand; Health Systems Research Institute, an autonomous state agency.

DATA SCIENCE CLASSES

Big Data Analytics, Media Insights & Data Analytics, Web Mining, Information Systems and Databases, Data Structures for Information Processing, Python Programming, Data Visualization and Storytelling Using Tableau.

TEACHING BOTH UNDERGRAD/GRAD STUDENTS IN TEXAS

Teaching under/grad students at Texas Tech University (2023 to present), UT Arlington (2013-14; TRiO/Upward Bound Pre-College Program with high school students in North Texas in 2009-10), both are Hispanic-Serving Institutions.

GRADUATE AND UNDERGRADUATE MENTORING

Since 2016, mentored 2 PhD students, 14 master’s students, and 15 undergraduate advisees in research, including a student winning “Best Paper Award”.

SELECTED RESEARCH PUBLICATIONS

* indicates undergraduate researchers, and ~ indicates graduate researchers.

Jitkajornwanich, K., Vijaranakul, N., Jaiyen, S., Srestasathiern, P., & Lawawirojwong, S. (2024). “Enhancing Risk Communication and Environmental Crisis Management through Satellite Imagery and AI for Air Quality Index Estimation,” MethodsX, 12, 102611. [Elsevier; Impact Factor = 1.9]

Xu, S., Jitkajornwanich, K., David, P., Park, H. J., Zhao, Y., Adu, J., & Chumthong, T. (2024). A longitudinal examination of collaboration diversity among communication scholars: 1990–2023. Journal of Communication, 74(6), 466-480. [Oxford University Press; Impact Factor = 6.1]

Shin, D., Jitkajornwanich, K., Lim, J. S., & Spyridou, A. (2024). “Debiasing Misinformation: How Do People Diagnose Health Recommendations from AI?”, Online Information Review. [Emerald; 2022 5-year Impact Factor: 3.3]

Chansuparp, M.~, Jitkajornwanich, K. (2022). “LifeGuard: An Improvement of Actor-Critic Model with Collision Predictor in Autonomous UAV Navigation,” Applied Artificial Intelligence, vol. 36 (1). [Taylor & Francis Impact Factor: 2.777 (Q2, 2021)]

Vajeethaveesin, T.~, Panboonyuen, T.~, Lawawironjwong, S., Srestasathiern, P. & Jitkajornwanich, K. (2022). “A Performance Comparison between GIS-based and Neuron Network Methods for Flood Susceptibility Assessment in Ayutthaya Province,'' Trends in Sciences, 19(2), 2038. [indexed by Scopus, SJR Q2 = 0.231 (2024)]

Kee, K.F., Le, B., & Jitkajornwanich, K. (2021). “If You Build It, Promote It, and They Trust You, Then They Will Come: Diffusion Strategies for Science Gateways and Cyberinfrastructure Adoption to Harness Big Data in the STEM Community,” Concurrency and Computation: Practice and Experience. [John Wiley & Sons Ltd.; Impact Factor: 1.447]

Jitkajornwanich, K., Pant, N., Fouladgar, M., & Elmasri, R. (2020). “A Survey on Spatial, Temporal and Spatio-Temporal Database Research and an Original Example of Relevant Applications Using SQL Ecosystem and Deep Learning,” Journal of Information and Telecommunication. [Taylor & Francis, Impact Factor = 2.7 (2023)]

Le, B.~, Escalera, F.~, Jitkajornwanich, K., Kee, K.F. (2019). “External Communication to Diffuse Science Gateways and Cyberinfrastructure as Innovations for Research with Big Data”, Proceedings of Science Gateways 2019, CA, USA.

Panboonyuen, T.~, Jitkajornwanich, K., Lawawirojwong, S., Srestasathiern, P., Vateekul, P. (2019). “Semantic Segmentation on Remotely Sensed Images Using an Enhanced Global Convolutional Network with Channel Attention and Domain Specific Transfer Learning,” Remote Sensing Journal, vol. 11(1). [Impact Factor: 5.353 (2020)]

Jitkajornwanich, K., Kongthong, C.*, Khongsoontornjaroen, N.*, Kaiyasuan, J.*, Lawawirojwong, S., Srestasathiern, P., Srisonphan, S., Vateekul, P. (2018). “Utilizing Twitter Data for Early Flood Warning in Thailand”, Proceedings of the 2018 IEEE International Conference on Big Data (IEEE BigData 2018), Seattle, WA. [indexed by Web of Science Core Collection]

RESEARCH STATEMENT