In September, the month of matriculation, a new batch of freshmen entered our University. The year 2010 is the last year that we will receive funding under the Ministry of Education’s first phase of “Aim for Top University Plan.” Owing to the tireless efforts of our faculty and students, National Taiwan University was ranked 95th in the UK Thames Higher Education Supplement’s 2009 World University Ranking. Moreover, this year, we remained the top university in Taiwan, Hong Kong and China, according to Shanghai Jiaotong University’s Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU), which ranked us at 127th in the world. This marked a great leap forward of 23 places over last year’s ranking of 150th. Also noteworthy is that, for the first time, we surpassed Singapore National University’s ranking of 145th, and pulled well ahead of Korea’s Seoul National University’s ranking of 148th, thus reaching the first phase goal of “top in the world and first among the Chinese” that we set for ourselves several years ago.

In this current issue, we cite many prestigious awards earned by NTU faculty, researchers and students. College of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science displayed the most dazzling performance: 11 NTU graduates were elected academicians of Academia Sinica in the 28th election of Academicians; among them, two NTU professors were awarded Academia Sinica’s 2010 award; Five NTU Professors Won Awards from Ministry of Education; NTU researchers won IEEE Transactions on Advanced Packaging Best Paper Award; students and professors won the Best Paper Award at 2010 IEEE International; Access IC Lab received the Best Paper Award at 2010 VLSI-DAT, to mention just a few.

In biomedical research we report several major breakthroughs. For example, a paper on hybrid gene therapy developed by a medical team at NTU Hospital was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences; the advanced minimally invasive laparoscopic surgical team at NTU successfully conducted splenectomy; NTU College of Veterinary Medicine researchers performed cardiac catheterization to treat a puppy with a rare heart abnormality..

To sum up, NTU faculty, researchers and students produced a dazzling array of achievements. Stay tuned for our next issue to catch the glorious details.