Five Outstanding NCKU Alumni Honored With 2009 NCKU Outstanding Alumni Award
2009-11-24 04:38:02 -
National Cheng Kung University (NCKU) presented its “2009 NCKU Outstanding Alumni Award” to five distinguished alumni in recognition of their remarkable professional achievements and contributions to their alma mater and the community. The award convocation was held at 10am, Nov. 11th, at the Conference Room in the Library of National Cheng Kung University (NCKU), Taiwan. Prof. Yia-Chung Chang, Mr.
Hsien-Yung
Pai, Academician Shung-Wu Lee, Prof. Wen-Long Chen, and Dr.
Yuh-San Liu received the “2009 NCKU Outstanding Alumni Award”.
In the ceremony, Academician Michael M.C. Lai, President of NCKU, commented that it is honorable to confer “Outstanding Alumni Award” to these five outstanding alumni, who have remarkable achievements in their specialties as well as become model for younger alumni and students. “I often say that students are the muscle and the blood, faculty, the bones, and alumni the soul of a university. NCKU alumni have brought honor and reputation to NCKU. NCKU graduates possess excellent competence to ensure career success in Taiwan and around the world.
Moreover, alumni contribute to the university in various ways. Firstly, by financial donation. NCKU values their annual giving, even if it is a small amount. Regular giving means consistent caring from alumni.
Secondly, I often found that many alumni have great life experiences to mentor the students. They inspire students more than academic learning, and they are alternative role models for the students to learn from.
Thirdly, many of our alumni are retired or are about to retire, since they are senior professionals who have expertise in their respect fields either in the academia, industry, or business, I invite you to come back to NCKU to interact with the younger generation. Your wisdom and experiences will broad our students’ horizon,” said President Lai.
“It is an exceptional honor for me to receive the award today. I especially want to dedicate this honor to all my teachers who gave me enormous encouragement and guidance during my college days. I will contribute as much as I can to NCKU. I wish every one of you success in whatever you do and even greater success with NCKU,” said Prof. Chang
“In NCKU, the most influential teacher for me is my calculus instructor, Prof. Kuo, who was 50 years old then. Prof. Kuo worked very hard and had high standards for students. I believe many teachers in NCKU today are like Prof. Kuo, so that they can educate excellent students. Actually, there is no Andy Lee without Prof. Kuo. I will give this honor to all the hard-working teachers in NCKU,” said Prof. Lee.
“Innovation and divergence are the two key points of industry development in the world. I am proud to have graduated from Department of Industrial Design and be brainstormed and inspired with many innovative ideas. Honestly, I am humbled by accepting this award because there are many other outstanding ones. I really appreciate receiving this award from President Lai. I know NCKU has put much attention on industrial design. I have already accepted many honors in recent years, but the NCKU Outstanding Alumni Award means the most for me,” Prof. Chen.
“I really appreciate NCKU, especially for my professors. I have hold on to two principles during the past 40 years while serving in the Executive Yuan. Firstly, to rule by the law. We need practice the measures by law to formulate the most suitable rules to our people.
Secondly, professionalism. There are diversified organizations with different functions under the Executive Yuan. Among them, I think urban planning and transportation is very important. Many NCKU alumni are really enthusiastic, helpful and outstanding. I am grateful to all my colleagues, teachers and classmates in NCKU because they are always willing to give me advice. This award is the best honor in my life,” said Dr. Liu.
About Prof. Yia-Chung Chang
Prof. Chang received his BS from NCKU in 1974. His got his MS and PhD from Caltech (California Institute of Technology), U.S.A. He has been appointed as Distinguished Research Fellow and Director of Research Center for Applied Sciences, Academia Sinica, Taiwan and Professor of University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, U.S.A.
He worked out on many fields including shallow impurities and excitons, electronic, optical, and transport properties of semiconductors and nanostructures, electronic and optical properties of semiconductor surfaces and interfaces, phonons and electron-phonon couplings in semiconductors and nanostructures, non-linear optical properties, many-body effects in semiconductors, exciton condensation, magnetic multilayers and giant magnetoresistance (GMR), femtosecond pump-and-probe phenomena, photonic crystals, metrology of semiconductor thin films and gratings, infrared and radiation detectors, semiconductor lasers and modulators, resonant tunneling diodes, quantum transport properties, single-photon generators, spintronics, quantum computing, optical metrology, and nano plasmonics.
About Mr. Hsien-Yung (Kenneth) Pai
Mr. Pai, born in Guilin, China, 1937, studied in Department of Hydraulic and Ocean Engineering, NCKU, for one year. After that, he transferred to NTU and received his B.A. in 1961. After that, he got his M.F.A. from the International Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa in 1965.
From 1965 to 1993 he taught Chinese language and literature in the East Asian Studies Program at University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB).
In addition, he is the Professor Emeritus of UCSB and an internationally recognized Chinese author.
Mr. Pai has authored 34 short stories and many touching novels which have been translated in many languages. He is one of the founders and the main caretaker of the most influential modern Chinese literary magazine, Modern Literature. His works have been translated into English, French, Korean, Japanese, and German and other languages. His depiction of characters, according to many critics, has attained a level of literary achievement attained only by a handful of his contemporaries. Some of his best-known publications are available in English, under the title “Wandering in the Garden”, “Waking from a Dream: Tales of Taipei Characters”, published by Indiana University Press in 1982.
In addition, Mr. Pai is a careful writer. His language, enriched by a solid foundation in Chinese classic literature, is poetic and precise.
Few people, however, realize how much time and effort he puts into crafting his works. The novel Crystal Boy, published by the Gay Sunshine Press of San Francisco in 1990, was resulted from ten years of hard work. It was completely revised more than five times. Crystal Boy and Wandering in the Garden, as well as several other works, have been made into movies and plays and a number of his other works are in the process of being adapted for stage and film productions. Moreover, recently he concentrated on the promotion of Kunqu, a traditional form of Chinese opera. One of the most well-known works revised by him is the Peony Pavilion.
About Academician Shung-Wu (Andy) Lee
Prof. Lee received his BS from NCKU Department of Electrical Engineering in 1961, and MS as well as PhD Department of Electrical Engineering of University of Illinois, at Urbana-Champion (UIUC) in 1964 and 1966, respectively. He assumed the duties as an associate professor in UIUC Electrical Engineering Department, a visiting professor at Technische Universiteit Eindhoven (TUE), Netherland, and the University of London, U.K, a professor in UIUC department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, and co-Founder from Demaco, Inc., Champaign, Illinois, later acquired by Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC).
In 1971, Prof. Lee published a paper on the microwave transmission through a periodic dielectric-loaded screen. That was one of the pioneer researches of a useful microwave device, known today as “Frequency Selective Surface (FSS)”. From 1978, and for the next ten years, Prof.
Lee continued his research on FSS for the famed Skunk Works of the Lockheed Corporation in California. He invented a FSS made of concentric rings, which had an unusual capability in controlling the microwave transmission over a wide frequency band. Without security clearance, Prof. Lee did not know what Lockheed did with his invention. Only many years later, did Prof. Lee become aware that his FSS was used to construct of the F-22 airplane. Such a nose cone was revolutionary at the time, and critical to the radar evading capability of the F-22.
In 1985, Prof. Lee received a “Million Dollar Award” from Lockheed for his FSS “innovation that saved Lockheed more than one million dollars".
In 2000, Prof. Lee was elected to the American National Academy of Engineering, because of his contribution to the stealth aircraft technology, “Shooting and bouncing rays,” and computer code XPATCH, a very important topic in electromagnetic research is the computation of radar signature of complex targets such as airplanes, tanks, ships, and buildings. By the 1980’s, basic theories for such a computation were understood but no good method existed for turning those theories into practical computational tools. Up to that point, radar signature could only be calculated for simple shapes such as spheres and cylinders, not for airplanes and tanks.
That changed in 1988, when Prof. Lee and his two graduate students at the University of Illinois developed a theory called “Shooting and Bouncing Rays (SBR)”. The success of SBR relies on the following elements: (i) electromagnetic scattering theories, (ii) ray tracing algorithm in the computer graphics, and (iii) CAD software typically developed by mechanical engineers. SBR combines these three elements and turned the computation of radar signature of realistic targets into a reality.
Prof. Lee did not stop at the theory. He went on to write a computer code “XPATCH” using SBR. Today, XPATCH is the standard software for radar signature in the United States. There are many impacts of XPATCH including that The U.S. government funds the development and distribution of XPATCH. XPATCH is used by 620 American organizations, to whom have been issued 25,000 licenses. According to the High Speed Computing Office (HPC) of the U.S. Department of Defense, XPATCH used 23 million processor-hours at the HPC computers in 2006. It was ranked NO.
6 in the Top Ten list of government-used software. XPATCH is the only electrical engineering code on the list. The US government has spent over $100 million dollars in developing and using XPATCH in the past ten years.
About Prof. Wen-Long Chen
Prof. Chen graduated from Department of Industrial Design with specialty in design. He established Nova Design in 1988 and has more than 20 years' experience in design management and leadership involving over 150 transportation design projects and over 1,000 product design projects.
As the driving force behind Nova's development, Prof. Chen transformed himself from a designer to a leader and shaped Nova's team around its core value Design Systems Competitiveness. Nova Design is now one of the premier global design firms in Asia.
As a designer and a design CEO, Prof. Chen believed that Design is a balancing act between the left and right brain of the design mind. He established Nova KMO, a systemic and systematic mechanism aims to manage global projects, while inspire creativity. This system enables strategic expansion to 6 global offices at Shanghai, Taipei, Ho Chi Minh City, Xiamen, San Jose, and Milano. At Nova, practically all projects were executed with cross-country, cross-border, and cross-cultural design.
Such environment nurtures creativity and innovation. Nova Design received a total of 37 international design awards and Prof. Chen was awarded several times for his personal achievement.
Prof. Chen contributed his knowledge to design education and design promotion through writings. His books were one of the best-selling design books. While serving at the Executive Board of International Council of Societies of Industrial Design (ICSID), he is in charge of the greater china region and has successfully hosted several international exhibitions and forums to bring designers together.
About Dr. Yuh-San Liu
Dr. Liu received his BS in NCKU Department of Transportation Management Science in 1967, and MS from Department of Urban Planning, National Chung Hsing University (NCHU) in 1970, M.E. from Department of System Engineering and Management, Asian Institute of Technology, Thailand in 1974, and Ph.D. NCKU from Department of Civil Engineering in 1985.
Dr. Liu has been appointed for many duties in Executive Yuan, including Secretary-General, Minister without Portfolio (Minister of State), and the Deputy Director of Council for Economic Planning and Development (CEPD).
About National Cheng Kung University (NCKU):
NCKU is located in the ancient city of Tainan, the historical and ancient cultural capital city of Taiwan, which boasts more than 50 national relics sanctioned by the government and is approximately 250 kilometers south of Taipei. It is connected to all major cities in Taiwan by the recently initiated state-of-the-art Taiwan High Speed Rail. Further, this historical heritage is the pride of Tainan City and represents a rich cultural resource to NCKU. The technological sectors in the Southern Taiwan Science Park offer students at NCKU with a stage to apply what they have learned into practice.
With three quarters of a century of distinguished history, with well over 130,000 powerful alumni now dotting the globe, many have achieved supreme successes in arts, business, education, science, technology and healthcare and are ready and willing to assist the 22,000 academic selective students and 1200 academic faculty members. Currently, both have an international flavor, with enormous regional support, and there is a permeating culture of proactive intellectual growth on the world’s stage NCKU in Tainan, Taiwan, has evolved from its engineering genesis into a powerful and comprehensive research international university in the Asia Pacific.
Since NCKU’s establishment in 1931, it has developed into a research intensive and comprehensive university with integrated academic fields in nine colleges: Liberal Arts, Sciences, Engineering, Electrical Engineering & Computer Science, Planning & Design, Management, Social Sciences, Medicine, and Bioscience & Biotechnology. NCKU currently offers 40 undergraduate programs (excluding the Program of Bachelor’s Degree), 78 master’s degree programs, 54 doctoral programs and 20 master’s degree programs for working professionals.
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