The Academia Sinica Research Award for Junior Research Investigators is given to young researchers whose publications are innovative, significant and have intellectual depth to make a lasting impact in their fields. Awards are presented in three categories: Mathematics and Physical Sciences; Life Sciences; and Humanities and Social Sciences. The award is considered a high honor in academic circles due to its rigorous selection process. NTHU is proud to announce that Professors Chien-Neng Liao from the Department of Materials Science and Jay Cheng from the Department of Electrical Engineering have garnered this prestigious award.

Prof. Chien-Neng Liao graduated from NTHU's Department of Materials Science in 1990. He went on to obtain a master's degree from UT Austin and a doctorate degree from UCLA, both in the same field. He served at Intel as a senior production integration research and development engineer for two years before returning to NTHU. His specialties include integrated circuit interconnection and thermoelectric materials and devices development. The research paper that won him this award was an investigation of copper atom migration under high current density using super fine copper wire in integrated circuit chip. Prof. Liao's team observed a retardation phenomenon in copper atom diffusion at grain boundary caused by nano-bicrystal structure. The discovery indicates that by introducing nano-bicrystal structure into copper wire in integrated circuit chip, the likelihood for copper wire to break and the device to defect caused by electromigration can be effectively reduced. The research presented an important insight for the next generation of integrated circuit production technology and was later published by Science in 2008. Prof. Liao said the research owes its success to the concerted effort of his research team and all the team members should share the honor. The team includes Prof. Lih-J Chen from NTHU's Department of Materials Science, Prof. King-Ning Tu from the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, UCLA, Dr. Wen-Wei Wu from the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, National Chiao Tung University, and Dr. Guan-Jia Chen.

Prof. Jay Cheng graduated from NTHU's Department of Electrical Engineering in 1993 and continued to study in the school's Institute of Electronics Engineering. He then went on to Cornell University where he received his Ph.D. in electrical engineering and returned to NTHU in 2003. His major fields of research are "optical queuing theory," "high-speed switching theory," "information theory," and "wireless communications theory." The paper that won him this award reports his researches in optical queuing. Prof. Cheng's finding is completely different from the more well-known "queuing theory" which focuses on statistical analysis of queue. Previously, it was difficult for researchers to upgrade Internet speed due to a lack of optical RAM to store optical data, but Professors Jay Cheng, Cheng-Shang Chang and Duan-Shin Lee's team proposes a solution in which an optical switch is used to guide optical data into optical fiber, allowing data to circulate until an appropriate time for release. Prof. Cheng has presented not only a new research field, but also a research direction urgently needed to solve the problem of optical package exchange in the Internet. Prof. Cheng extends his gratitude to each member of his team and the National Science Council and NTHU's Excellence Research Program for their support. He also took the opportunity to encourage young scholars to engage in innovative and challenging research. "Persist and you shall breakthrough!" said the award winner.