Once an electrical engineer at NASA's Johnson Space Center, Ash has an undergraduate and master's in engineering, and a PhD in Linguistics and Paleography in the Graduate Institute of Chinese at National Taiwan Normal University. His dissertation is titled 《文字考釋及以偏旁為主的文字分析研究》 (Paleographic Analysis and Research into a Functional Component-based Framework). His coursework and research focuses on historical phonology, paleography, oracle bone script, and excavated Warring States bamboo texts. He speaks Mandarin, Cantonese, Dutch, German, and English, and is learning Japanese.
Our Team
John Renfroe, CEO
CO-FOUNDER, RESEARCHER
John studied Linguistics and Paleography in the Graduate Institute of Chinese at National Taiwan Normal University. His coursework and research focused on excavated Warring States bamboo texts, historical Chinese character morphology, and the Shuowen Jiezi 說文解字 and its commentaries and criticism. He now lives in Tokyo and is learning Japanese.
Ulrich Apel, PhD
LEXICOGRAPHICAL ADVISER, RESEARCHER
Having studied at Munich and Ōsaka University, Ulrich holds a PhD in Japanese Studies. He has worked in the field of Japanese lexicography for 20 years, primarily focusing on WaDoku, a Japanese-German dictionary and the world’s most comprehensive Japanese-to-Western-language dictionary. He has also developed other digital tools for teaching and learning Japanese characters, such as KanjiVG.