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Associate Professor Dr. Budi Waluyo from the School of Languages and General Education has been named an awardee of Walailak University's highest research honor, the Princess Chulabhorn Gold Research Award, for the second consecutive year — a distinction held by only a small number of WU faculty members. He shares this year's recognition with Associate Professor Dr. Phongpichit Channuie from the School of Science and Associate Professor Dr. Watcharapong Mitsuwan from Akkhararatchakumari Veterinary College.

The award recognizes WU academic staff with at least three years of service and sustained, high-impact publication records, including at least ten Scopus-indexed articles as first or corresponding author, five of which rank in the 90^th percentile or higher within their field.

For Dr. Budi, receiving the award a second time carries a different weight than the first. "Receiving an award once can mark a successful year, but receiving it again reminds me that research requires sustained commitment," he said. "For me, the second award is particularly meaningful because it represents continuity."

That continuity is rooted in a trajectory few would have predicted when he joined WU in 2017, fresh from completing his PhD in the United States, without a single Scopus-indexed publication to his name. Today, his output stands at 87 such publications, with a marked acceleration between 2023 and 2025 — the product, he says, of habits built years earlier. "It was largely about self-discipline, persistence, and hard work," he said. "There really is no shortcut."

Much of Dr. Budi's research agenda has grown directly out of his own classroom experience at WU. Teaching Thai students without speaking Thai fluently and often working with learners at A1–A2 English proficiency, pushed him toward self-regulated and autonomous learning, flipped and gamified classrooms, and technology-enhanced instruction. That foundation has since expanded into artificial intelligence, multilingualism, gender, and positive psychology in language education. "There is actually a consistent question connecting much of my work," he said. "How can we create conditions that help language learners become more engaged, independent, confident, and successful learners?"

Two early studies remain especially meaningful to him: a 2019 paper in the Electronic Journal of Foreign Language Teaching on task-based, theme-based role-play among 782 EFL learners (DOI: 10.56040/bdwa161a), and a 2020 paper in the Journal of Asia TEFL on a general English course combining e-learning and active learning across 983 students (DOI: 10.18823/asiatefl.2020.17.1.10.160). Both, he said, grew from a simple question: "Is there a better way to help my students learn?"

That body of work — now cited more than 1,000 times — helped earn Dr. Budi a place on Stanford University's World's Top 2% Scientists list in 2025, alongside his first Princess Chulabhorn Gold Research Award. He sees the recognition less as a finish line than as added responsibility, an opening for international collaboration and for representing Southeast Asian English language teaching research on a wider stage.

His current research is turning toward a question he expects will define his field for years to come: as students increasingly rely on generative AI to write, summarize, translate, and converse, how much of that performance reflects genuine, independently retained learning? "The more important research question," he said, "is under what conditions does AI extend students' learning, and under what conditions does it replace the thinking that students need to do in order to learn?"

Dr. Budi joins Dr. Phongpichit, a physicist specializing in theoretical cosmology and gravitational physics who also serves as Dean of the College of Graduate Studies, and Dr. Watcharapong, a microbiologist at Akkhararatchakumari Veterinary College known for his work in medical and veterinary microbiology, as this year's recipients of the Princess Chulabhorn Gold Research Award.