Recently, National Science Council (NSC) announced the recipients of 2012 NSC Outstanding Research Award, and a grand total of ten NTHU faculty members won this prestigious award. Consider the size of our faculty, NTHU is ranked at the top of all universities and research institutes in Taiwan to have the highest percentage of award winning faculty.

Prof. Wei-Leun Fang and Prof. Cheng-Kuo Sung of the Department of Power Mechanical Engineering, Prof. Chin-Liang Wang and Prof. J. Andrew Yeh of the Department of Electrical Engineering, Prof. Ann-Shyn Chiang of the Institution of Biotechnology and Brain Research Center, Prof. Ite Albert Yu, Department of Physics; Prof. Hsing-Wen Sung, Department of Chemical Engineering and the Department of Biochemical Engineering; Prof. Chen Fu-Rong of the Department of Engineering and System Science, Prof. Chao-Ton Su. Department of Industrial Engineering; and Prof. Chieh-Yu Chang of the Department of Mathematics are the ten proud winners.

Prof. Wei-Leun Fang specializes in the field of microelectromechanical systems (MEMS). He combines mechanical, mechanical design and microfabrication process technology to develop various types of microelectromechanical sensors, actuator, and systems to achieve slim and light engineering applications. Since Prof. Fang is an expert in both mechanical engineering and semiconductor manufacturing process, he utilizes the characteristics of semiconductor manufacturing process to integrate microelectromechanical components into a single chip using the System-on-Chip (SoC) method, and incorporate variety of chips and parts using the System-in-Package/Assembly method. His research is highly valuable both academically and practically.

This is the second time Prof. Fang won the NSC Outstanding Research Award. Due to the urgent needs of application, Prof. Fang has devoted his effort to the development of micro sensors using basic technology described previously and the results were excellent. He was then invited to attend the IEEE Sensors Conference, the most prestigious international conference in the field of sensory as the Asia Region Program Committee Chair in 2010. In addition, he has successfully competed on behalf of Taiwan to host one of the most important conferences in the field of microelectromechanical, i.e. Transducers, in the year of 2017.

Prof. Cheng-Kuo Sung's field of expertise is in machine kinetics, machinery design, and nano-technology applications in machinery systems. In last fifteen years, while solving the precision errors of the CD-ROM drive, he also discovered that the nonlinear characteristic of support springs in CD-ROM drives vibrate under certain conditions of operation. His laboratory conducted an in-depth investigation of the basic theories to analyze every possible dynamic response that could influence the performance of the CD-ROM and effectively resolved the unstable vibrating problem. Prof. Sung took a step further by utilizing this unstable phenomenon to design a centrifugal pendulum and hula hoop energy capturing mechanism, which increases the energy capturing efficiency by using the unstable vibration produced by the mechanism. This research resulted in over twenty research papers published in the best international journals, and became the most frequently cited references internationally.

In addition, Prof. Sung and his research team expanded their theoretical research on nonlinear dynamic system and free-fall control mechanism, and applied their research findings to an anti-impact design for hand held mobile devices and the rehabilitation of human lower limbs. The above researches were also published in the best journals in the fields and have received patens from the U.S. Prof. Sung believes that guiding students during their research projects, publishing papers that resolves technological challenges, and watching students grow and achieve their goals are the three happiest things in life. He further expressed that he is grateful for the conducive environment provided by NTHU and the Department of Power Mechanical Engineering, and he thanked all the hard work and cooperation of his students and research partners.

Prof. Chin-Liang Wang of the Department of Electrical Engineering has been teaching at NTHU for 25 years. His research focuses on the implementation and design of communication and signal processing system. Aside from searching for theoretical innovation and breakthrough, Prof. Wang also emphasizes on practicality. Currently, he has approximately 60 international journal articles, 150 international conferences papers and several domestic and international patents. His publications are often cited by researchers worldwide and attracted a great deal of attention; especially his research on Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiplexing (OFDM) delivery system design and VLSI signal process system design. Moreover, Prof. Wang has received the 2012 IEEE Fellow Award for his outstanding contribution on Signal Processing System Algorithm and Framework.

During past few years, Prof. Wang and his research team made a complete and in depth investigation on PFDM/Multi-carrier transmission system within the baseband processing core technology including synchronized, channel estimation, interference cancellation, peak-to-average power ratio reduction/estimation, resource allocation, and rapid Fourier transform/inverse transform (FFT/IFFT). Their research findings are not only innovative but also extremely practical, and have since become the key baseband technologies urgently needed in wireless communication system designs.

Prof. J. Andrew Yeh's current researches are: dielectric liquid lens and nanostructure reinforced silicon substrate breakdown strength. Dielectric liquid lens is the first power driven lens in the world and received theoretical patent in 5 different regions. Prof. Yeh's students have established a new company in 2011, and they hope to be merged with other companies to establish and unify new applications, as well as assisting the building of domestic core optical focus and zoom technologies. Moreover, Prof. Yeh used the nanostructures reinforced silicon substrate breakdown technology to increase the anti-destruction strength of chips. This new technology has been validated by experiments as having the capability to increase the chip strength by six folds, surpassing any known methods.

How genes and brain store information is one of the most important and mysteries questions in the field of life science. Similar to the discovery of DNA double helix to the comprehensive understanding of genetics, Prof. Ann-Shyn Chiang's laboratory is building Drosophila connectome as a navigator for the manipulation of neural networks to understand brain function. The research team used self-developed FocusClear high resolution 3D micro imaging technology to reconstruct partial smell signals transmission path (Cell 2007, 128:1205-1217), then constructed a standard Drosophila brain, and followed by parsing reconstruction of approximately 10% of the single neurons and the major neural signaling channels in the entire brain (Current Biology 2011, 21:848-854；「New York Times」2010/12/14). Through the mapping of neural brain network, Prof. Chaing has discovered that long term memory formation only requires few protein syntheses between a few nerve cells (Science 2012, 335:678-685). This research has brought Prof. Chiang the Top Project Award from the NSC in 2011 and also numerous recognitions and awards.

Prof. Ite Albert Yu's research utilizes cold atoms to perform slow light, weak light nonlinear optics, quantum information manipulation experiments. More significantly, his laboratory is one of the earliest and leading research team devoted to the study of cold atoms and slow light. Prof. Yu stated that slow light has the ability to increase the interaction time of light and matter, and low light intensity and nonlinear optic single photon mechanism can reach high efficiency, thus, by utilizing slow light one can provide photon and atomic exchange wave function or quantum state method to be developed into quantum memory. He is confident that all these researches on quantum information manipulation will become influential and important applications in the near future.

Prof. Yu's recent contributions are: the use of optic storage technology to propose innovative photon phase modulation mechanism and its viability; successfully pioneered the new era of low-light nonlinear optics by making light pulse stationary in cold atom, and analogues the light pulse being captured at high Q value of optical cavity. This research was published as a news release in Nature Physics, "Frozen Light Switch", which reported his research on stopping the second light pulse and bridged its interaction by its atoms to make the interaction time between photons no longer restricted by the pulse movement speed, thus increasing the nonlinear optic efficiency of single photon to the maximum; and enhanced optical storage memory efficiency to 78%. Prof. Yu stated that combining optical storage technology, stationary light pulse, and implementation of single photon phase modulation will usher us into a new era of quantum information manipulation in the future.

Prof. Hsing-Wen Sung specializes in the application of drug/gene delivery carriers, cardiac tissue engineering and regenerative medicine, medical devices and medical imaging related biomedical materials. He has devoted great efforts in the research and development of nanoparticles delivery carrier platform technology on oral absorption of protein, polysaccharide or nucleic acid medications which have brought him much international attentions when it was published on Biomacromolecules in 2007. The oral protein drug platform technology is the leading technology in the world, not only was he invited by prestigious academic journals to write various reviews, the research results have also won him 57 patents in the US, Taiwan, Australia, Canada and China. In addition, the technology was transferred to NanoMega Medical Corp. as well. Currently, the largest global insulin producer, Novo Nordics and Eli Lilly, the large pharmaceutical manufacturer in the States are testing and evaluating the oral protein drug platform technology with animal experiment. Prof. Sung is also assisting a Taiwanese pharmaceutical manufacturer to develop a granulocyte colony stimulation factor (GCSF) drug, and assisting the Development Center of Biotechnology to develop an oral medication for heparin, as well as working with the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) to develop an oral medication for human growth hormone. Additionally, Prof. Sung and his research team also participated in the research of cardiac tissue engineering and regenerative medicine as well. They have successfully developed medical supplies such as porous myocardial patch, cell film and cell pellets for the application on post myocardial infarction tissue regeneration and ventricular function reconstruction.

Prof. Fu-Rong Chen focuses his research on high resolution transmission electron microscopy, electron optics, phase electron microscopy, energy loss spectroscopy, biomedicine imaging, material analysis and testing. Prof. Chen and Prof. Dirk Van Dyck, University of Antwerp in Belgium, have developed the Big Bang Theory with method and theory of reconstructing three dimensional atomic structures using single projection direction of high resolution outgoing waves. Their research work has been published by Nature on June 14, 2012. Currently he is collaborating with Oxford Instruments to overcome a high-resolution electron microscope analysis instrument. By next year, with the support of NSC and NTHU, Prof. Chen hopes to establish the first Taiwanese electro-optical instrument company using domestically developed technologies to develop advanced scientific instruments. Furthermore, Prof. Chen and his research team also developed an ultrafast (femto-second) electron gun and electron microscopy "phase plate" supported by Academia Sinica and are currently applying for Japanese patent with JEOL Electron Microscope Company.

Prof. Chao-Ton Su's areas of expertise are: quality engineering, complete quality management, Six Sigma, data mining and its application, industrial engineering and management. For past five years, Prof. Su has put a great deal of effort in the research of quality engineering and management, and computational intelligence related researches, such as optimization of manufacturing process design, multi-class Mahalanobis Taguchi system, Six Sigma and other quality related researches.

He had successfully assisted several domestic high tech companies in optimizing their manufacturing processes and raised their production efficiency. Prof. Su also cooperated with Cathay General Hospital to improve various medical quality issues such as sleep apnea syndrome diagnosis, diagnosis of pressure sores during surgery, chemotherapy prescription error reduction and improvement of acute myocardial infarction patients’ vascular reperfusion time. Last but not the least, Prof. Yeh not only published his research results in several international journals, he is also the author of several text books such as Quality Management (strongly recommended by renowned quality management master Dr. Noriaki Kano), Six Sigma (first Chinese text book on Six Sigma) and Quality Engineering: Off-Line Methods and Applications (published by CRC Press/Taylor & Francis Group and made available worldwide).

Prof. Chieh-Yu Chang's research is focused on number theory, particularly the body of function on transcendental numbers theory. In recent years, he concentrates on the special characteristic p value research, especially special values from geometric invariant or important function value. According to Prof. Chang, the ability to translate the algebraic relations between these values is extremely important and interesting. With the support from National Center for Theoretical Sciences, Prof. Chang and his research partner, Prof. Papanikolas from Texas A&M University, started a long term research cooperation and have elevated their research to the top of this field. They spent four years overcoming many difficulties and finally proved the Brownawell-Yu conjecture: Drinfeld algebraic independent logarithmic function values in the algebraic point. Their research result on Brownawell-Yu conjecture was published in American Mathematical Society Journal, 2012, the first Taiwanese scientist ever published in this prestigious journal. Currently, Prof. Chang is expanding his research to characteristic p of multiple zeta values of transcendence and arithmetic geometry structures.