Cultivating Talent to Face the Unknown and Create the Future Together
As the AI wave continues to surge, the "unpredictable future" has brought significant attention to talent development. The ways we nurture talent and equip individuals to adapt to environmental changes face unprecedented challenges. As we approach the end of the year, I would like to share some of our efforts and achievements in talent cultivation, as well as the experiences of our outstanding alumni, hoping that in the coming year, we can face the unknown and create the future together.
First, congratulations to Professor Yu-Lun Liu (note: make sure the spelling is correct.) for receiving the 2024 Google Research Scholar Award, a prestigious recognition awarded to only 70 young scholars worldwide. This marks the first time a Taiwanese scholar has received this award since its inception, a great honor for both National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University (NYCU) and the College of Computer Science (CCS). Additionally, congratulations to Professor Hsin-Mu Tseng (note: make sure the spelling is correct.) for receiving the Ministry of Education's 68th Academic Award, and to Professor Li-Wei Chan's (note: make sure the spelling is correct.) research team for winning the ACM CHI 2024 Best Paper Award—truly remarkable achievements.
To provide students with more diverse and enriching learning experiences, following last year's dual-degree agreement with the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) CS department (3+X Program), our college has signed another dual-degree agreement with UIUC's iSchool this year. In August, three students—Po-Hsuan Hou, Ying-Jui Liu, and Chien-Feng You—successfully enrolled in the UIIC 3+2 dual-degree program.
Talent cultivation requires exceptional faculty. However, constrained by the structure of university faculty salaries in Taiwan, our college faced challenges, such as nine offers to graduates from prestigious foreign universities being declined over the past two years. Fortunately, through continued efforts in faculty recruitment, including the establishment of the President's Young Scholar Award, donations from alumni, and contributions from dedicated alumni fundraising campaigns, we have mitigated the issue of low salaries. This February, we successfully recruited two outstanding young scholars—Assistant Professors Ting-Jung Chang and Yu-Chun Yen—from globally top-ranked institutions Princeton University and UIUC. We believe their diverse perspectives will inspire our students greatly.
In addition to the outstanding performances of our faculty and students, our alumni have not only excelled in their fields but also generously given back to their alma mater by sharing their experiences and mentoring juniors. In April, during "NCTU Day," our college hosted the "CS Alumni Homecoming," honoring alumni who have excelled in various fields and providing a platform for valuable experience sharing. Furthermore, in August, our college held an alumni gathering in Silicon Valley in the United States, inviting six senior alumni to share their experiences in job hunting and navigating the AI wave and unpredictable future. They offered practical insights and advice from perspectives such as management, engineering, product management, and recruitment.
Finally, I am delighted to share that my research team's open-source 5G core network software, free5GC, was announced in September as part of the Linux Foundation during the "Open Source Summit Europe" in Vienna, Austria. Over the past two decades, Taiwan's telecommunications industry has primarily focused on mobile phones and small base stations. Through the open-source initiative of free5GC in the core network, we aim to lower innovation barriers, promote industry collaboration and standardization, and accelerate global innovation and advancement in 5G and 6G technologies.