Distinguished Professor Ta-Hui Lin of the Department of Mechanical Engineering at National Cheng Kung University (NCKU) has received the Ministry of Education’s 2026 Excellent Teacher Award. Having dedicated nearly 40 years to teaching at NCKU, Prof. Lin has long pursued research ranging from combustion technology and energy education to, more recently, net-zero carbon emissions. He previously served as principal investigator of the Ministry of Education’s Clean Energy Systems Integration and Application Talent Development Program, through which he promoted energy education nationwide, and has received numerous honors for teaching excellence and student mentorship.

To deepen strategic research collaboration between Taiwan and leading European research institutions and advance cutting-edge technology development, National Cheng Kung University (NCKU) welcomed a high-level delegation from the Interuniversity Microelectronics Centre (imec) of Belgium on September 2. Both sides engaged in in-depth discussions on cross-disciplinary research integration, industry-academia joint research platforms, international talent development, and institutionalized collaboration mechanisms. Through these efforts, NCKU and imec aim to build a long-term international innovation ecosystem with a meaningful impact on industry.

National Cheng Kung University (NCKU) continues to deepen its engagement with Malaysian alumni and the local educational sector. On September 5, Executive Vice President Yuh-Neu Chen, representing President Meng-Ru Shen, led a delegation to Kuala Lumpur to attend the opening ceremony of the 41st NCKU Mathematics and Science Competition and 5th NCKU Business Competition, hosted by the NCKU Alumni Association of Malaysia. The delegation also participated in the NCKU Admissions Briefing in the afternoon and celebrated the Association’s 54th anniversary at NCKU Gala Dinner that evening. This full day of activities—spanning academic competitions, recruitment, and alumni networking—brought together local alumni and key partners to celebrate shared achievements and reinforce lifelong connections.

“Serving at a medical center means not only taking on the mission of treating acute, severe, rare, and difficult illnesses, but also shouldering the responsibilities of teaching and research. Even more crucially, it requires passing down clinical experiences and specialized expertise. Only through this can we cultivate physicians to possess both clinical competence and humanistic care.” Upholding this guiding philosophy, Professor Julia Yu-Yun Lee of the Department of Dermatology, College of Medicine at National Cheng Kung University (NCKU), has continued to return to NCKU since her retirement six years ago in August 2020 to teach dermatopathology, impart her decades of clinical insight, and guide junior colleagues. Her recognition with the Ministry of Education’s “Contribution to Education Award” in 2026 stands as an authentic testament to her lifelong commitment to medical pedagogy.

The United States approved the world’s first proteolysis-targeting chimera (PROTAC) drug this year for the treatment of breast cancer, marking a major advance in cancer therapeutics. Building on this emerging technology, an interdisciplinary, inter-university research team involving Assistant Professor Po-Han Chen of National Cheng Kung University’s Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology has developed togoPhosTAC, a novel programmable targeted dephosphorylation platform that extends the concept of targeted protein degradation to targeted protein dephosphorylation.