As September sets in, the new Fall Semester starts.  The focus of this current issue of alumni electronic bulletin is:  On August 8th Taiwan was severely damaged by Typhoon Morakot, hence the University launched a comprehensive series of disaster relief programs which included donations to the victims, student emergency relief funds and all kinds of social services.  Some student associations took the initiative to donate books to the children of the disaster-stricken areas, especially those which were inundated by the August 8th flood.  May God bless Taiwan!!

While the post-disaster reconstruction work is still under way, the H1N1 flu making its foray into Taiwan. NTU invented an in vitro method called NTU-Virus Bom which can kill nano-virus and micron bacteria at the same time, thereby making our contribution to the prevention of the pandemic outbreak of swine flu.  In the area of bio-medical research, Professor Po-Nien Tsao’s research on the Notch messages of the lung was published in the top journal of developmental biology “Development ” and made its cover story, while the research team led by Dean of the College of Medicine Dr. Pan Chyr Yang discovered a tumor-suppressor gene and the results were published in the internationally renowned journal “Nature Cell Biology.”  NTU’s achievements in this regard are nothing short of phenomenal.

On July 2nd U.S. News and World Report published its ranking of world universities, in which NTU was ranked 49th in the category of Engineering and IT.  In point of fact, NTU was the only university from Taiwan to be ranked among the top 100 in the world.  NTU’s performance in the area of electrical engineering and information science has always been outstanding, as exemplified by the fact that NTU had many papers presented at the ACM International Conference on Multimedia this year, and two research papers presented at the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computer Systems (CHI).  In the Spanish Webometrics ranking of world universities, NTU also moved up from 55th place last year to the 26th place this year, a progress of leaps and bounds. 

Our students’ performance has also been extraordinary.  After ten years’ continuous efforts, NTU students finally succeeded in gaining the opportunity to host the 2010 World Model United Nation Conference in Taipei.  Additionally, our students were successful in organizing Taiwan’s first international student forum—“The Gobal Initiatives Symposium,” which set the precedent of an international academic activity that was initiated, planned, and executed solely by university students.  Global concern and student participation may change this world, and this has become an important and necessary route for modern day students.