Tag: National Taiwan University

The National Taiwan University (NTU) Global International Program TRIAD (GIP-TRIAD), founded in 2017 with the University of Tsukuba, Japan, and the University of Bordeaux, France, enables students to rotate through three universities and complete internships abroad. From September to October 2025, an NTU delegation attended the Tsukuba Conference and the tri-university GIP-TRIAD meeting to strengthen international alliances and academic collaboration.

Led by Professor Shen Tang-Long, Chair of NTU’s Department of Plant Pathology and Microbiology, the delegation engaged with international scholars, industry experts, and the Global Young Academy, while students showcased cross-cultural innovation in the “Global Health and Medical Challenges” competition. Vice President Prof. Shih-Torng Ding highlighted NTU’s commitment to advancing global education and research partnerships.

The delegation then travelled to France, briefing Taiwanese Ambassador Hao Pei-Chih on program progress, meeting with education and science officials, and visiting the University of Bordeaux to hold seminars with faculty and students. As GIP-TRIAD approaches its 10th anniversary in 2026, all three universities plan joint commemorative events, reinforcing NTU’s long-term dedication to cultivating globally minded, interdisciplinary leaders.

On October 29, 2025, the National Taiwan University (NTU) Living Lab Center co-hosted the Smart Aging Technology Innovation Forum with the Ministry of the Interior’s Architecture and Building Research Institute. The forum gathered experts from academia, industry, startups, and care sectors to explore opportunities and future applications of aging-related technologies in residential settings, aiming to bridge the gap between product innovation and real-world adoption.

Speakers emphasized the importance of user-centered design and field validation. Dr. Liu Pei-Ling, Director of the NTU Living Lab Center, highlighted that design thinking helps companies understand market value and integrate products into daily life, ensuring technology evolves from “usable” to “desirable” for older adults. Experts also identified key market challenges, including high deployment costs, privacy concerns, fragmented demand, and policy or regulatory constraints.

The forum concluded with actionable recommendations for industry stakeholders: enhancing cross-domain integration, addressing emotional and usability needs, focusing on “aging in place” solutions, and developing “product-as-service” models. The event showcased Taiwan’s collaborative efforts among academia, government, and industry to advance smart aging technologies and laid out a practical roadmap for future innovation in elderly care.

The College of Liberal Arts Building at National Taiwan University (NTU) won the Award of Excellence in the Mid-Rise Buildings category at the American Concrete Institute (ACI) Excellence in Concrete Construction Awards in Baltimore on October 27, 2025. This marks the first time a Taiwanese engineering project has been recognized in ACI’s international competition, showcasing NTU’s leadership in combining architecture, engineering, and academic research.

The building, designed by Bio-architecture Formosana and structurally engineered by CECI Engineering Consultants, blends exposed concrete with traditional brickwork to reinterpret the courtyard house (siheyuan) concept. A 50-meter long-span sky bridge over the sunken courtyard highlights both aesthetic innovation and structural ingenuity. High-performance concrete, reinforced shear walls, and careful seismic design improved durability and safety, demonstrating NTU’s commitment to engineering excellence.

Sustainability was integral to the project, including low-carbon concrete mixes, eco-friendly materials, and UHPC sunshades for energy efficiency. The building has also received major domestic awards, including the 2024 Taiwan Architecture Award and the 32nd Chinese Golden Stone Award, solidifying NTU’s reputation for innovative, sustainable, and globally recognized architectural and engineering research.

The 2025 IEEE Asian Solid-State Circuits Conference (A-SSCC) took place from November 2–5 in Daejeon, South Korea. Ahead of the conference, the IEEE Solid-State Circuits Society (SSCS) Taipei Chapter hosted a press briefing at the National Taiwan University (NTU) Alumni Hall on October 27 to showcase Taiwan’s outstanding research achievements. Industry and academic leaders, including UMC Chairman Lu Chao-Chun, praised Taiwan’s research teams for their global excellence in solid-state circuits.

Taiwan had six papers selected for presentation at A-SSCC 2025, highlighting contributions from National Taiwan University (NTU), National Tsing Hua University, and National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University. Notably, National Taiwan University’s Professor Chen Hsin-Shu’s team presented an energy-efficient 4th-order delta-sigma ADC design that balances high resolution, medium bandwidth, and low power consumption, while Professor Yang Chia-Hsiang’s team introduced a multi-level runtime reconfigurable array (RTRA) chip capable of switching between 24 programs in under 1 microsecond, ideal for edge computing applications.

Overall, Taiwan continues to lead in AI-on-Chip, ADCs, power management, and analog front-end technologies, demonstrating its strong R&D capabilities and establishing National Taiwan University (NTU) as a key driver of solid-state circuit innovation in Asia.

A research team led by Distinguished Professor Ru-Shi Liu at National Taiwan University (NTU) has published a comprehensive review on near-infrared (NIR) fluorescent materials in the top journal Progress in Materials Science. The study highlights the development of NIR phosphors spanning NIR-I (650–950 nm) to NIR-III (1500–1850 nm), emphasizing structural innovations and energy transfer mechanisms that drive next-generation optical and biomedical applications.

The review underscores the challenges of conventional NIR light sources, such as limited spectral range and bulky design, and demonstrates how NIR phosphor-converted LEDs (pc-LEDs) can achieve wide spectral coverage, high efficiency, and stability. Using a “cube-element model,” the team explains the interplay between host lattices and activators, including transition metals and rare-earth ions, enabling tunable emission, high quantum efficiency, and broad-spectrum NIR luminescence suitable for biomedical imaging, spectroscopy, and portable devices.

Looking forward, the NTU team envisions integrating artificial intelligence and sustainable material design to achieve cross-scale and intelligent NIR phosphor development. Their review provides a panoramic perspective on material theory, photophysical mechanisms, and application potential, laying the foundation for next-generation NIR light sources and advanced optoelectronics.

National Taiwan University (NTU) researchers have found that later-born children are less likely to develop allergic diseases compared to first-borns. The study revealed that birth order plays a significant role in childhood risks of asthma, allergic rhinitis, and atopic dermatitis.

The research was conducted by Dr. Chan Chin-kan of Taoyuan Hospital and led by corresponding author Prof. Chen Pau-chung, director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and attending physician at National Taiwan University Hospital (NTUH). By analyzing nationwide birth registration data from 2004 to 2014, the team discovered that second-born and third-born children had notably lower allergy risks regardless of gender, maternal age, or socioeconomic status.

As one of Asia’s leading institutions in medical and public health research, NTU continues to advance global understanding of environmental health, population science, and childhood disease prevention. The findings offer valuable insights into how Taiwan’s declining fertility rate — which has dropped from 3.69 in 1970 to 0.87 in 2023 — may be linked to rising pediatric allergies due to reduced early-life microbial exposure in smaller families.

The research team emphasized that this trend signals an important public health concern as allergic diseases continue to increase in Taiwan.

Supported by the Ministry of Education’s “National Key Field Top Research Centers Program,” National Taiwan University (NTU) established the AI Top Research Center and the Advanced Biomedical Research Center in 2025. These centers aim to drive interdisciplinary innovation in artificial intelligence and precision medicine, addressing national technological and healthcare needs while positioning NTU as a global hub for cutting-edge research and talent development.

The AI Top Research Center, led by Academia Sinica fellow Li Lin-Shan, brings together international scholars and industry leaders to build a competitive and socially responsible AI ecosystem. Its research focuses on AI education, trustworthy and explainable AI, next-generation models, and multilingual/cross-cultural understanding. The center will collaborate with top universities such as MIT, Stanford, and ETH Zurich, as well as industry leaders like NVIDIA and Google DeepMind, to advance AI applications across healthcare, finance, manufacturing, and more.

The Advanced Biomedical Research Center integrates NTU’s medical, engineering, and life science faculties, along with NTU Hospital and the Genomics and Precision Medicine Research Center. Led by experts including NTU Yonglin Health Research Institute director Yang Pan-Chi, it focuses on major diseases such as cancer, cardiovascular disorders, neurodegeneration, and gut microbiome research. The center combines fundamental studies with applied research—high-resolution imaging, AI diagnostics, and multifunctional therapeutics—while fostering international collaboration with France’s CNRS and INSERM and industry support to accelerate clinical translation and innovation.

Scientists at National Taiwan University (NTU) have created a pioneering optical microscopy method capable of reconstructing a person’s long-term blood glucose history from a single blood sample. Led by Professors Chi-Kuang Sun and Tzung-Dau Wang, the team developed colour-resolved third-harmonic-generation microscopy (cTHGM), a label-free imaging technique that distinguishes glycated haemoglobin (HbA1c) from normal haemoglobin within individual red blood cells.

Unlike conventional monitoring systems that capture short-term glucose fluctuations, this method tracks sugar exposure over the entire 120-day lifespan of red blood cells. Using a broadband femtosecond-laser microscope, the technique detects nanometre-scale wavelength shifts caused by chemical differences in haemoglobin molecules, producing a high-resolution chemical map of long-term blood sugar exposure.

The NTU researchers suggest that cTHGM could improve precision diabetes management and provide early detection of metabolic disorders associated with cancer. Beyond clinical applications, the technique demonstrates the potential for real-time, colour-sensitive molecular imaging in living tissues, turning subtle biochemical traces into actionable diagnostic information.

Professor Kun-Hsien Tsai and alumna Kai-Ti Yu from National Taiwan University(NTU)’s Institute of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences joined an international research team led by Princeton University to redefine the evolutionary history of the underground mosquito Culex pipiens form molestus and its role in spreading West Nile virus. The large-scale genetic study, published in Science on October 23, 2025, provides new insights into how mosquitoes adapted to human environments.

The findings reveal that the so-called “underground mosquito,” known for infesting subways during World War II, did not evolve recently with urbanization. Instead, genetic evidence suggests that mosquito populations adapted to human habitats as early as 1,000 to 10,000 years ago, likely in ancient Egypt or the Mediterranean. The NTU team further discovered distinct genetic differences between northern and southern Taiwan populations, suggesting multiple introductions or gene exchanges among mosquito groups.

The study highlights the importance of cross-disciplinary approaches to public health and urban planning. It calls for enhanced monitoring of mosquito gene flow across urban and rural regions, integration of mosquito ecology into disease prevention and climate adaptation policies, and greater community awareness of vector control. The research provides a scientific foundation for forward-looking strategies to prevent viral spillover and improve urban health resilience.

This research was published in Science: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ady4515

National Taiwan University (NTU) recently held the Garmin Professorship and Scholar Awards ceremony alongside the inauguration of the NTU–Garmin Faculty Residence. Garmin Founder and Chairman Dr. Min Kao personally presented awards to three endowed professors—Professors Chi-Kuang Sun (Graduate Institute of Photonics and Optoelectronics), Chih-Wei Liu (Department of Electrical Engineering), and Chen-Hung Kao (Department of Materials Science and Engineering)—and four Garmin Scholars: Professors Chao-Chieh Lan, Chia-Ya Lan, Nien-Tze Lee, and Yi-Teng Huang. Each awardee will receive an annual grant of US$30,000 for a renewable three-year term.

The newly completed NTU–Garmin Faculty Residence features 14 housing units and shared living spaces to provide a supportive environment for teaching and research. By integrating accommodation with the professorship program, NTU aims to strengthen its capacity to attract and retain top scholars and to further enhance international academic competitiveness.

NTU President Wen-Chang Chen expressed gratitude to Dr. Kao for his sustained generosity, noting that in addition to establishing the endowed professorships, Dr. Kao has also donated to support the construction and maintenance of faculty housing. Dr. Kao announced an additional US$5 million donation to expand the program, extending eligibility to the College of Science and further advancing NTU’s research and global engagement goals.