The challenge for information technologists is to help users find related and useful facts in the jungle of online information and extract them, he said.
When the Information Technology Institute was set up in 1986, he moved over from the National Computer Board which he had joined in 1982.
At the Kent Ridge Digital Labs (KRDL), Dr Lee will head the Knowledge Group. His research team is working on developing intelligent and automated software tools that aid information inquiry. It will also focus on how such tools can be used for business intelligence.
The tools are more than common Internet search engines. They are intelligent because it takes only relevant information and update it in real time. It also gathers other bits of information that are relevant but may not have been asked for by the user.
These tools will also support multiple languages and they will be able to identify the advertisements in the Web pages and delete them before the information is pushed through to the users.
Dr Lee said that at the moment, he is working with some local companies to test the concept.
He is Dr Limsoon Wong, who studies computing at Imperial College and who has won several awards including the 1996 Tan Kah Kee Gold medal and the National Science Academy Young Scientist of the Year award in 1997. [Added by Limsoon: He was a past president of ICAAS.]
An ordinary-looking, bespectacled and eager young man, he grabs your attention with his comments:
"I could have gone to any of 20 research institutions in the world rather than work at this KRDL," he said.
But it is just his forth-right way of talking. He is here because he likes his colleagues and his boss and because he is able to carry out both fundamental and applied research.
Dr Wong is the one who is credited with the groundbreaking Kleisli technology which is a data integration tool.
To him, the guiding principle as a researcher is to make things simple so that it is easily analysed, used and maintained.
"My decision to come back here was a test. My friends told me it was too far away from the main research centres in the US."
"I could be less productive in my research. Well, I’ve been here for three years and so far it has been a surprise."
"I’m well connected and found it easy to collaborate with good researchers elsewhere."
"I’ve also been able to spend a significant amount of time---about two to three months every year---in other labs in other countries."