NYCU and cacaFly Host Young Chair Professor Award Ceremony to Foster Exceptional International Talent

To further enhance Taiwan's information technology industry and promote advancements in higher education, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University (NYCU) and cacaFly hosted a Young Chair Professor Award Ceremony on September 16. This event aims to allocate resources to boost the competitiveness of college faculty salaries, thereby attracting exceptional international talent back to Taiwan for teaching positions. The initiative seeks to bring in new talent to strengthen industry-academia collaborations and foster partnerships between universities and industries, establishing a model for effective talent acquisition and knowledge transfer.

Since its founding, cacaFly has consistently invested resources to promote the development of technology education in Taiwan and align it with international standards. This commitment is designed to create a supportive environment for technology education, driving sustainable growth within the industry. With the backing of cacaFly's CEO, Nathan Chiu, the cacaFly Young Chair Professor Award Program was launched in 2017 in partnership with the Department of Computer Science at NYCU. This initiative aims to help NYCU attract talented young scholars back to Taiwan for teaching positions.

This year, Professor Yu-Chun Yen was appointed as a cacaFly Young Chair Professor. Her research focuses on Human-Computer Interaction, Collective Intelligence, and Human-AI Collaboration. Dr. Yen earned her Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) in 2021. Following her graduation, she was honored as a Computing Innovation Fellow by the National Science Foundation (NSF). In February 2024, Dr. Yen returned to Taiwan to assume a full-time position as an assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science at NYCU. With her impressive research accomplishments and strong international collaborations, she brings experience in large-scale interdisciplinary projects and bilingual teaching, establishing herself as a promising young scholar.