from the Ambassador of the Kingdom of Cambodia, Her Excellency, Sin Serey. For the past 31 years, Ms. Maria has been helping bridge the digital divide in developing nations in Asia. More recently, Ms. Ng has been studying ways to incorporate Khmer, the Cambodian language, into computer usage. She was pioneer in establishing Cambodia's internet network. Her other projects include helping to develop IT and e-community in Kep and Kamchay Mea."

-Courtesy: Singapore News
 

Maria Ng Lee Hoon is a Regional Senior Program Specialist attached to the Pan Asia Networking (PAN) Program Initiative at IDRC. She has represented IDRC's ICT4D interests in the Asia and Pacific region, for almost three decades guiding its program of work and budget to reflect the concerns of the region . She has contributed substantially to developing IDRC's IS/IC/ITM/ICT4D programming in Asia, leading it from the disciplines of information systems, development communication sciences, information tools and methods to the current Internet and networking sciences, in keeping with the changing technologies. Prior to IDRC, she spent 10 years working within the library and management information systems of the Singapore Ministry of Defence and at the National University of Singapore before joining IDRC in 1976. Maria's first degree is in English Language and Literature (Open U-UK) and she holds the MCLIP (Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals, UK). In recent years, Maria has been specializing in Distance Education and her qualifications include the MDE (Master in Distance Education) and AGDDE(T), the Advanced Graduate Diploma in Distance Education (Technology), both from Athabasca University, Canada.