Pansak was chosen by the centre's selection committee to replace Thaweesak Koanantakool, who was heading information and communications technology (ICT) development at the centre for eight years.

Before officially taking up his new role, Pansak is preparing the direction of ICT development at the centre. In the next four years of his term, from 2007 to 2010, he plans to put more focus on ICT development in the three key areas: microelectronics, software, and embedded systems, with the aim of providing research and development to support and create a true ICT industry in the country.

For the microelectronics sector, he said Nectec would set up clusters with universities and private and government sectors for transfer of technology knowledge to create new innovations that would support the ICT industry, as well as setting a road map for its development.

In this area, he said the centre would focus on the hard-disk industry. Thailand is one of the world's leading hard-disk manufacturing centres. In 2004, the export value of hard disks reached Bt483 billion or 12 per cent of total exports.

As major hard-disk manufacturers including Hitachi, Fujitsu and Seagate have set up manufacturing bases here, he said the centre also planned to make local technology development available to support this industry while training people to support the industry's demands.

To support the hard-disk industry, the centre will set up centres of excellence at three universities, which will work as test labs. The three centres would be at Khon Kaen University, King Mongkut's Institute of Technology Ladkrabang (KMITL), and King Mongkut's University of Technology Thonburi (KMUTT).

The centre at Khon Kaen University, he said, would be a centre for electronics and hard-disk component development while the centres at KMITL and KMUTT would manage software for analysis and advanced manufacturing respectively.

For the software sector, Pansak said the centre would encourage local software developers to expand their products to reach international standards while improving local skills to handle outsourcing software development projects from other countries. A greater focus would  also be put  on mobile application software development such as software games and mobile content services. The plan also includes the development of interoperability standards for mobile platforms to help developers link data more easily, while applications for mobile networks will offer new kinds of services to cell-phone users.

The last area is related to embedded systems. Theese are a combination of computer hardware and software designed specially for various kinds of application devices. It's expected that embedded systems will play a crucial role in the post-PC era when the bulk of new intelligent devices including automobiles, cameras, mobile phones and household appliances will become a part of everyday life.

Realising this, Pansak said the centre would encourage local software developers to create software using the embedded-systems platform.

He said key areas of embedded-system development include automotive electronics, agritronics (use of embedded systems for agriculture), radio frequency identification system (RFID), and consumer electronics.

"We hope to push local research and development for use in real business situations.

"That will improve our competitiveness while enhancing the potential of Thai industry to move into upstream industry," Pansak said.