Dr. Nitsara Karoonuthaisiri won the Royal Thai Government Scholarship to pursue her BS-MS-PhD studies in the United States. She received a BS. in Chemical Engineering with honors with distinction from Columbia University, New York, in 1999. Graduating first in her Chemical Engineering class, she was conferred the title of departmental valedictorian awarded Bonilla Medal, and her name was inscribed at the Chemical Engineering Department. She completed her MS in 2001 and PhD in 2004 in Chemical Engineering at Stanford University. Her PhD thesis won the Outstanding Thesis Award from the National Research Council of Thailand. She also completed “Executive Education” from John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University in 2015.

Dr. Karoonuthaisiri started her research career in Thailand at the National Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (BIOTEC) in 2004. She established and became the founding head of the Microarray Laboratory in 2007 and established the Biosensing Technology Research Unit at BIOTEC and was appointed as its first director in 2014. She was appointed as Honorary Professor from Queen’s University Belfast (UK) in 2021. She has established International Joint Research Center on Food Security, trilateral collaboration among NSTDA, Thammasat University and Queen’s University Belfast in 2022. On her leadership capacity, she was elected as a founding co-Chair for Global Young Academy in 2010. She was selected as Young Global Leader from World Economic Forum in 2013. During 2017-2022, Dr. Karoonuthaisiri was appointed as a member of the drafting committee of the 20-year National Strategic Plan.

Dr. Karoonuthaisiri’s expertise is in diagnostic development for agriculture and food security purposes. She employed omics technology to investigate many organisms important for agriculture and food industry. She has published over 80 peer-reviewed scientific papers with an author h-index of 27, filed over 20 patents. Dr. Karoonuthaisiri has received numerous awards and honors such as

• Young Technologist of the Year (2011) from the Foundation for the Promotion of Science and Technology under the Patronage of His Majesty the King
• Awarded a UNESCO-L’Oreal Thailand 2009 fellowship “For Women in Science” (2009)
• Invention Award, National Research Council of Thailand (2010)
• The 2014 Research Award, National Research Council of Thailand
• The 2021 Taguchi Prize for Outstanding Researcher from the Thai Society for Biotechnology
• 2021 ‘Rising Star Award of the Government Scholarship Students’ from the Association of the Thai Government Scholarship Students.
• 2021’Outstanding ONE HEALTH Researcher in Aquaculture Award’ from American National Shellfisheries Association
• The 2022 Research Award, National Research Council of Thailand