welcome to National Central University

The “Seminars on Journalism” organized by the Office of Secretariat, National Central University (NCU), were combined with the lecture tour “I Am a Foreign Correspondent” initiated by the Central News Agency (CNA) this semester. The seminar invited Ms. Yachen Tai, CNA foreign correspondent based in the United Kingdom, to share her valuable overseas experience, and many students were attracted to attend the lecture. NCU expected that such a lecture would broaden students’ global vision and boost their media literacy skills.

As the first university in Taiwan that set “sustainable development” as its main goal of education and research, National Central University (NCU) has been actively responding to the international consensus on sustainability—net zero emissions. At the forum of “Sustainable and Decarbonizing Technologies” held on Feb. 16, NCU President Dr. Jou Jing-Yang took the initiative to declare that NCU is estimated to attain 50% carbon neutrality on campus in 2030 and 100% in 2050.

INSPIRESat-1, a small satelite co-developed by Taiwanese, American, and Indian research teams, was successfully launched from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in India on Feb. 14, 2022, Taiwan time. Flight control teams at National Central University (NCU) in Taiwan, as well as at the University of Colorado at Boulder (CU Boulder) in the US, and the Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology (IIST) in India successfully received signals transmitted by the spacecraft in the afternoon of that day, indicating that the satellite had powered on and was functioning normally. This is the very first time that a payload developed by a Taiwanese academic organization shared the same spacecraft with a payload sponsored by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in the USA. It is also the first time that a Taiwanese research team officially collaborated with the Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology in India.

Professor Wang Chien-Chia and Indonesian doctoral student Titi Rindi Antika in the Department of Life Sciences at National Central University have dedicated themselves to decoding genetic information and successfully discovered key evidence for the evolution of the translation enzyme aminoacyl-tRNA synthetase (aaRS). The result was published in Nucleic Acids Research, a leading international journal with an impact factor of 16.971. This research result has not only taken the translation of the genetic code one step forward but also benefited the treatment of relevant diseases.

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.