Tag: Taiwan

Understanding how quickly ice sheets can collapse is among the most urgent questions in climate science—and the geological past offers the only real-world test cases. An international research team led by Professor Chuan-Chou Shen of the Department of Geosciences at National Taiwan University (NTU) has now reconstructed the mechanism behind the most extreme warming and sea level rise event of the past million years. Published in Nature Communications in June 2026 and selected by editors as a Featured Article, the study shows that the weakening and subsequent recovery of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) drove a large-scale redistribution of heat within the ocean, triggering rapid ice shelf melting and abrupt sea level rise.

The team focused on Termination IV, a deglaciation roughly 340,000 years ago during which sea levels rose by as much as five meters per century—orders of magnitude faster than today’s rate of a few millimeters per year. Previous research had struggled to establish causality because marine sediment records lacked precise absolute dating. Beginning in 2012, the team conducted repeated fieldwork at Bàsura Cave in northern Italy, drilling flowstone cores and applying high-precision uranium-thorium dating at NTU’s HISPEC laboratory to build an independently dated hydroclimate record of the European westerlies. Integrating this framework with North Atlantic sediment records allowed the first precise reconstruction of the sequence linking circulation change, ocean warming, and sea level rise. The team established a chronology for five termination events across 440,000 years, finding that AMOC weakened for approximately 13,000 years during Termination IV—the longest such interval on record—trapping enormous heat in the deep ocean before releasing it toward polar regions.

The implication is that oceans do not merely store heat passively but actively regulate ice sheet stability through circulation. Professor Shen notes that while conditions 340,000 years ago cannot be mapped directly onto the present, the finding matters because the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are currently shrinking, and whether AMOC weakens or reorganizes will be decisive for future projections. Should deep ocean heat again be delivered rapidly beneath ice shelves, sea level rise may prove abrupt rather than gradual. Completed by more than 15 institutions across Asia and Europe, with core laboratory work and manuscript preparation led by NTU graduate Dr. Hsun-Ming Hu, the study offers a stronger scientific basis for coastal and low-lying regions planning climate adaptation.

Recognition from regional scholarly bodies offers one of the clearest measures of a university’s standing among its peers, and Asia’s magnetics community has just delivered such a verdict. At the Taiwan Magnetics Annual Conference held in Kinmen on July 21, 2026, the Asian Union of Magnetics Societies (AUMS) announced that its highest honor, the AUMS Award, would go to Professor Ching-Ray Chang, Emeritus Professor in the Department of Physics at National Taiwan University (NTU) and Chair Professor at Chung Yuan Christian University, jointly with Professor Yoshishige Suzuki of the Osaka Institute of Technology in Japan. Conference chair Professor Teruo Ono of Kyoto University presented the award and certificate in person.

Established in 2009, AUMS brings together the magnetics societies of Taiwan, Japan, Korea, China, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Russia, and confers its flagship award every two years to honor Asian scholars whose work in magnetism, magnetic materials, and applications has achieved world-class significance. The award citation highlighted Professor Chang’s pioneering contributions across quantum computing, spintronics, nanotechnology, and quantum education, noting how his research integrates quantum information science, advanced materials, and quantum-inspired computing. It further credited his visionary leadership with advancing international collaboration and cultivating scientific talent throughout Asia, thereby strengthening the region’s strategic position within the global quantum technology landscape. Both laureates have been invited to deliver keynote addresses at the International Conference of AUMS (IcAUMS) in 2028.

The honor follows Professor Chang’s recent inclusion in the Quantum 100, a global list compiled in connection with the United Nations International Year of Quantum Science and Technology in 2025, underscoring the breadth of a career spanning fundamental physics, applied technology, and science education. NTU’s presence at the awards extended to the next generation as well: Dr. Danru Qu of the university’s Center for Condensed Matter Sciences was among the recipients of the AUMS Young Researcher Award, established to encourage emerging scholars. Taken together, the two awards point to sustained research capacity in spintronics at NTU and to a pipeline of talent connecting established leadership with early-career researchers—a combination increasingly central to how universities build durable influence in strategically important scientific fields.

As the semiconductor industry pushes transistors toward atomic dimensions, a long-standing measurement bottleneck has threatened progress: no reliable way to directly observe how charge carriers behave at the shrinking contact between metal and semiconductor. A research team led by Distinguished Professor Ya-Ping Chiu of the Department of Physics at National Taiwan University (NTU) has now overcome that barrier, developing a technique capable of probing a working chip at atomic-scale resolution. The findings were published in Nature on July 1, 2026 (Nature 655, 350–356).

The breakthrough centres on a method the team calls Operando Cross-sectional Scanning Tunneling Microscopy (Operando XSTM), which measures electron transport at the metal–semiconductor contact edge while the device is actually powered and operating. Drawing on nearly two decades of cross-sectional STM expertise, the team integrated functioning transistors into an ultra-high-vacuum platform, mechanically cleaved them to expose a clean cross-section, and scanned the contact region point by point under real operating voltages. This allowed the first direct measurement of the carrier transfer length—a core quantity governing contact resistance—without relying on model-based extrapolation. For a monolayer molybdenum disulphide transistor with a bismuth contact, the measured transfer length was roughly 2 nanometres, far below the 9.25 nanometres inferred by conventional models, confirming the design’s promise for next-generation technology nodes.

The achievement reflects a genuinely international, cross-disciplinary partnership. NTU developed the operando inspection platform; National Taiwan Normal University fabricated and electrically characterised the two-dimensional devices; and the National University of Singapore, led by Professor Lain-Jong Li, contributed materials, structural analysis, and simulation—forming a collaboration spanning materials, devices, metrology, and theory. Validated across multiple material systems, the platform establishes a versatile new standard for direct semiconductor inspection and underscores Taiwan’s deepening capacity to lead the frontier of advanced chip research on the global stage.

Experiential, project-based engineering has become one of the clearest ways for universities to translate classroom theory into real-world capability, and few programmes embody this better than student-run motorsport. At National Taiwan University (NTU), that spirit is captured by NTU Racing, a wholly student-led team that designs, builds, and tests its own electric Formula-style racecars. Its latest machine, Epsilon 6 (EP6), recently delivered the best competitive result in the team’s history, placing 11th in the electric vehicle category at Formula SAE Japan—one of Asia’s premier collegiate racing events—while also earning the JAMA Chairman Award and the Sportsmanship Award.

The road to that result was defined by pressure and problem-solving. After completing EP6 in mid-2025, the team entered Formula Student Taiwan, where rainwater breached the motor system and forced a withdrawal from the endurance race—an early but decisive lesson in waterproofing that the students corrected before travelling to Japan. There, a tougher test came off the track: inspectors initially rejected the car over safety concerns during technical inspection. Rather than accept the setback, the team drafted a formal appeal while preparing on-site modifications as a contingency. The chief judge ultimately upheld their case, allowing EP6 to compete in its original form and secure its landmark finish. For the team, the episode reflected a guiding philosophy that racing is less about building a flawless car than building the best one possible before the deadline arrives.

What distinguishes NTU Racing is a deliberately interdisciplinary and sustainable model. The team recruits students from across the university rather than engineering alone, running hands-on workshops in welding and carbon-fibre fabrication so members of every background can contribute, and it institutionalises knowledge transfer by having incoming leaders shadow veterans for months before each handover. Recently relocated to the upgraded Advanced Vehicle Research Center on NTU’s ShuiYuan Campus, the team is already developing its successor, EP7, which will advance EP6’s torque-vectoring system toward a four-wheel-drive configuration—research the students have presented at the SAE WCX 2026 World Congress. Guided by the motto “Go the extra mile,” NTU Racing offers a compelling model of how iteration, resilience, and cross-disciplinary collaboration prepare students to lead in a fast-moving global industry.

As artificial intelligence reshapes the future of medicine, cross-border academic partnerships have become essential to turning technological promise into better patient care. On March 5, 2026, National Taiwan University (NTU) hosted a high-level delegation from Mahidol University for discussions on AI, medical research, and long-term academic collaboration. Led by Vice President Nopraenue Sajjarax Dhirathiti and comprising 12 faculty specialising in information technology and medicine, the delegation was received by NTU Executive Vice President Prof. Shih-Torng Ding and Vice President for International Affairs Prof. Hsiao-Wei Yuan, reflecting the enduring partnership between the two institutions.

Founded in 1888, Mahidol University is among Thailand’s leading universities in medicine, engineering, and health sciences, and maintains close research ties with NTU across medicine, engineering, and information and communication technology. During the visit, the delegation toured the NTU Cancer Center to observe first-hand how AI is being integrated into cancer diagnosis, treatment, and clinical care, before joining NTU’s College of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science for talks on future research collaboration, interdisciplinary innovation, and talent cultivation. Both sides expressed particular interest in expanding cooperation in AI for medicine, intelligent healthcare, and digital health technologies.

Representatives from both universities framed the partnership as part of a wider global movement to fuse advanced technological innovation with medical research and healthcare delivery. By strengthening joint research initiatives and academic exchange, NTU and Mahidol aim to cultivate globally competitive talent capable of shaping the future of AI-driven healthcare—reinforcing the role of Asia-Pacific institutions in the international effort to build smarter, more equitable health systems.