“Taiwan’s science miracle,” an article highlighting the country’s research and education, was published in the March issue of Physics Today, the membership journal of the American Institute of Physics.
The 1994 return of Taiwan’s first Nobel Prize winner, Lee Yuan-tseh, to take over as president of Taipei City-based Academia Sinica is described as a turning point in Taiwan’s scientific research development in the article, written by senior editor Toni Feder.
Lee said the two main tasks facing him at the time were to get a substantial increase in funding and to attract top talent, and he succeeded at both over the next decade.
The ROC government had the same idea, and the science budget increased from 1.6 percent of gross domestic product in 1994 to more than 3 percent in 2013. This effectively quadrupled research funding, as GDP almost doubled to US$470 billion over the period.
According to Lee, another focus was to capitalize on the wealth of local talent that had traveled abroad to study and teach. “I put enormous effort into attracting excellent scientists to return to Taiwan.”
The huge influx of returned scientists has been crucial to making Taiwan an attractive alternative for local students to pursue higher degrees. The number of Taiwan students in the U.S. peaked at 37,581 in the 1993-1994 academic year. That number dropped to 21,867 in 2012-2013 as more scientists opted to stay home where education and research have matured over the past two decades.
The article highlights Luo Chih-wei, a specialist in ultrafast optical techniques at Hsinchu City-based National Chiao Tung University’s Department of Electrophysics, as a prime example of the quality of this new breed of homegrown talent, quoting a string of innovative projects that Luo and his team are involved in.
Luo graduated from NCTU in 1998 and received his doctorate there in 2006.
“The advantages of staying are not having to put in the time, effort and money to apply to study abroad; the lower prices in Taiwan; and tighter ties to the local physics community,” Luo said.
International networking opportunities that would be afforded by a few years overseas are to some extent made up for by the Internet, and the government and scientific advisers are also working hard to boost global links, Luo added. (SDH)
Write to Taiwan Today at ttonline@mofa.gov.tw