welcome to National Central University

Assistant Professor Yen-Chen Pan at the Graduate Institute of Astronomy, National Central University (NCU), participated in the international project "Young Supernova Experiment (YSE)". Participants of the project observed the entire dying process of a red supergiant from its dying mass-loss episodes to its explosion, and the result was published in The Astrophysical Journal early this year. The Lulin One-meter Telescope (LOT) at NCU’s Lulin Observatory was also used in this joint observation mission. Its main contribution was surveying the early-stage variation of luminosity after the supernova exploded. This significant achievement was also covered by CNN.

When night fell upon the campus, brilliant beams of light reached the sky from a side of the blue track and field stadium at NCU, attracting many people’s attention. The research team led by Professor Ching-Cherng Sun from the Department of Optics and Photonics at NCU developed an LED device, which could project the LED beam that could reach a distance up to 12 kilometers. Their research result was published in an SCI journal, Crystals.

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).

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.