Hi! I’m Dr. Waraporn “Fhon” Nuntiyakul. I’m a lecturer at Chandrakasem Rajabhat University (CRU). I come from Thailand, where there are not many astrophysicists. Many Thai people still believe in astrology but not astronomy. I want to educate future students to make them think in a scientific way rather than to believe a fortune teller. I have about 10 students are interested in astrophysics research in CRU.

This summer is really a special summer for me. I have a chance to visit to University of Wisconsin River Falls in the US to give some talks about my research. I work in astrophysics field, studying cosmic rays. We have a detector called a neutron monitor in Thailand. Thailand is a special location, where it has the highest cutoff rigidity in the world, which means only particles that have high energy can enter the atmosphere. I focus my studies on the Galactic cosmic rays (GCR), the which are influenced by solar activity as they arrive at the Earth. When we are in solar maximum there are less GCR and vice versa when we are in solar minimum, less activities, there are more GCR. So by studying this we can learn about our Sun.

When I first came to River Falls in summer, I thought that I only have to give only seminars, I didn’t expect to supervise students’ project. It turns out to be very impressive. I love that students always want to learn, they want to know things and the most important thing, they never give up. When they did something wrong and have to do the whole thing again, they are willing to do it. I think this spirit is important, seek to learn, seek to know no matter how hard work they may encounter, they still want to learn. I also learn from them because every week these students have to present their work to progress report and to share some knowledge they did with the others. Especially, in my relevant work, I learn more when I supervise Laura and Kyle (photo below). They always come up with many questions to ask me. We learn together during the progress of their work. Seeing their development makes me happy.



I will use my experience in this summer to teach my students in Thailand. I want to thank Prof. James “Jim” Madsen and Assist. Prof. Suruj Seunarine for giving me a chance to come here and taking care of me while I live in River Falls. Thank you Prof. Paul Evenson for introducing me to Jim. Paul is both my former Ph.D international co-advisor and a father-like figure to me. I want to thank my Ph.D advisor, Prof. David “Dave” Ruffolo, who is my role model for being a good teacher and good researcher. I want to thank Dr. Alejandro Saiz “Alex” Rivera, Dr. Achara “Kim” Seripienlert and Dr. Pierre-Simon Mangeard for your brilliant comments and suggestions to get the wonderful project.


Left row from front to back: Dr. Zhu Fengrong, Dr. Paisan Tooprakai, Fhon, Pierre-Simon, Alex and Dave Middle row: Kim Right row from front to back: Aey, Art, Bus, three international students from high school, Dr. Warit Mitthumsiri