welcome to National Central University

How would penguins in the Antarctic meet polar bears in the Arctic? The College of Earth Sciences at NCU gathered two speakers to give speeches at the college’s weekly meeting. The speakers were Assistant Professor Cissi Ying-tsen Lin at the Department of Space Science and Engineering, the first Taiwanese female scientist that conducted research, winter-overed, and stayed consecutive 54 weeks in the Antarctic, and Professor Hao Kuo-Chen at the Department of Earth Sciences, who led the first Taiwanese expedition team of earth sciences that set up our national flag in the Arctic. Through their splendid and immersive sharing of experiences, the two speakers led the audience to the adventures of Taiwanese earth sciences teams into the polar circles.

Southeast Asia is one of the major biomass-burning (BB) source regions in the world, and the BB-derived emissions are the main air pollution issue in Southeast Asia. Our research results indicate that effective management strategies are needed to reduce Equivalent BC (EBC) emissions in Chiang Mai, and it is necessary for public health authorities to give proper health advice during haze events to safeguard the vulnerable groups within the population. The reduction of open vegetation burning activities in northern peninsular Southeast Asia (PSEA) will bring considerable climate and health co-benefits to Southeast Asia and downwind regions (such as Taiwan).

How could we take a patient with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a confined soul, for a “video ride” by brain wave? A research team of AI-based brain-computer interfaces at NCU has broken through various limitations for recovering ALS patients’ autonomy and dignity. Furthermore, with the help of AI, the team has recently developed a next-gen tiny brainwave control device. In addition to medical treatment, the device can also be applied to future life and future education. With the brainwave control device, one can command a robot proxy for pandemic prevention and control. This innovation unfolds the future of “zero contact.”

Under the guidance of Dr. Lin, Yuan-Chien — an Associate Professor from the Department of Civil Engineering, the team including postgraduates Chi, Wan-Ju and Lin, Yong-Qing from Hydrological and Environmental Informatics Laboratory integrated the application of Internet of Things (IoT) and spatiotemporal big data analysis, and developed novel data fusion technology to provide high spatiotemporal resolution PM2.5 concentration information. The results were published in a top SCI international journal "Environment International" in the field of environmental science.

The research team led by Assistant Professor E Ray Hsieh in the Dept. of Electrical Engineering at NCU has developed a new type of three-dimensional Fe Fin Field-Effect Transistor (FeFinFET) NVM, which is highly efficient and energy-saving. It can operate under 3V and take only 80 nanoseconds to complete operation. Furthermore, it has a linear-tuning window of conductance that is 30,000 times wider (Fig. 2), its continual endurance cycles exceeded one million times (Fig. 3), and it has the ideal activation function of AI (Fig. 4). These characteristics make FeFinFET NVMs very suitable for highly dense storage with multi-bit-per-cell capacity and AI inference applications based on in-memory computing. This research has been selected by an international flagship conference—2021 Symposia on VLSI Technology—to be covered in its Focus Session.