Founded in 1973 in northern Taiwan’s Hsinchu County, the state-sponsored Industrial Technology Research Institute has played an important role in spearheading the development of Taiwan’s high-tech industries.
Having already developed more than 9,000 patents, ITRI continues to make hundreds of technology transfers every year to local businesses. It also helped nurture some of the country’s best entrepreneurs. More than 60 CEOs in Taiwan are former researchers affiliated with the institute.
In April of this year, Shyu Jyuo-min, a former professor and veteran ITRI researcher, took over the job as the institute’s president. He sat down for an interview with Taiwan Today Nov. 4, during which he shared some of his goals in leading the nation’s largest research institution in the field of applied science.
TT: What will be the main direction of ITRI’s research and development activities under your leadership?
Shyu: It is important that the institute’s missions are in line with government policy. These include the promotion of the six emerging and four smart industries.
The government is promoting these industries to help our nation keep pace with changing demands from the environment, such as climate change and an inadequate energy supply. These are pressing issues that are already having an impact on the entire world. Taiwan, which imports 99 percent of its energy, is no exception.
ITRI will focus its research and development on green energy and biotechnology, two areas people are less familiar with. The two fields will be supported by information and communications technology as its applications can extend over all emerging industries.
TT: Would you give examples of these two focal areas you just mentioned? How about starting with green energy?
Shyu: Green energy includes technologies for solar photovoltaic panels, electric vehicles, green buildings and offshore wind farms.
Imagine how you would install a turbine in the deep sea without the whole thing falling down—the technology involved is really quite difficult.
As for EV technology, the focus will be on motorcycles. Currently local manufacturers are capable of producing completely self-made electric motorcycles, including batteries. But the question is, what can we do to promote them?
There are more than 10 million motorcycles in Taiwan, which means the initiative could create huge economic value while helping save energy and protect the environment.
For instance, ITRI has developed STOBA [self-terminated oligomers with hyper-branched architecture], a substance added to lithium batteries to prevent them from exploding. As we know, Sony Corp. suffered huge losses a few years ago, when it was forced to recall unsafe batteries in its laptops.
In addition, the institute is working on technologies to make batteries lighter. For example, the battery for a 50cc electric motorcycle weighs about seven kilograms. That’s not a bad number, but if we can reduce it to three kilograms, then riders can carry a back-up battery in their vehicles. Or they can rent a fully charged battery in exchange for a dead one at any convenience store. Doesn’t that sound wonderful?
TT: What areas will biotechnology focus on?
Shyu: The main focus will be on medical equipment, such as endoscopes, electrocardiography machines and almost every apparatus one finds in an emergency room.
The institute is basing most of its researches in this area on how to make the equipment more portable in an effort to promote a decentralized health-care system that will prevent large hospitals from becoming overcrowded.
For example, doctors will be able to monitor patients’ heart beat while they stay home. As real-time updates are sent to the hospital, doctors can immediately decide whether it is necessary for patients to come in for more check-ups. Many more functions provided by such portable equipment can be explored.
Some other R&D activities in biotechnology will involve medicine transport and composite materials. The former is a technology to send, say, a cancer-killing drug directly into tumor cells.
As an example of our biotech researches, consider a joint research project we conducted with the National Taiwan University Hospital in creating artificial cartilage for knee joints.
Cartilage repair usually requires two surgeries. In the first phase, cartilage tissues are taken out to be cultivated outside the human body. After a few months, the newly generated tissues are implanted into the joint during a second surgery.
But with an innovative technology developed by ITRI, tissues can be taken out, grounded out and then placed back in the patient using a one-step procedure. New tissues will form within the body automatically. The Department of Health has given us permission to test this method on humans.
TT: ITRI is known for its innovative hardware technology. As software and the service industry become increasingly more important to business, do you foresee any changes in the way the institute will operate?
Shyu: It is true that traditionally the institute has been focused on hardware. In the future, our focus will shift to developing systems, software and services. We hope the number of researches in these areas can be increased to 70 percent of our total.
TT: As some of the large corporations have set up their own R&D departments, what role does ITRI take in promoting Taiwan’s industrial development?
Shyu: One of our strengths lies in the fact that we have researchers in practically every major field, something that’s pretty rare in research centers around the world.
Also, the institute has its own special facilities [called open laboratories] which can prevent possible pollution generated by experiments, especially when the company is testing on new materials. Companies can run their experiments in our labs in cooperation with our researchers.
TT: ITRI has won quite a few awards over the last few years, for instance, The Wall Street Journal gave it the Technology Innovation Gold Award in 2010, and in the same year R&D Magazine awarded the institute three of its coveted R&D 100 awards. How did ITRI manage to win these prestigious awards?
Shyu: Each of the rewards represents a research project that has been going for at least 10 years, such as the Flex UPD technology—Flexible Universal Plane for Displays. Being creative needs only a new idea, but to come up with an innovation, you have to make it happen. If you ask how we did it, I would say it is the result of the long-term and dedicated efforts of our staff.
TT: What aspirations do you have for your staff and yourself?
Shyu: For my staff? [laugh] I’ll have to treat them better, of course.
For myself, I hope while the institute is doing cutting-edge research to boost Taiwan’s global competitiveness, it can also step up efforts to assist small and medium businesses. ITRI currently has a campus in southern Taiwan. It also has local service centers in Taitung, Taipei and Kaohsiung to help traditional industries upgrade their operations. We visit local companies and provide them with technical support according to their needs and assist them in applying for research subsidies from the government.
Of the more than 15,000 companies that ITRI helps every year, about 70 percent of them are SMEs.
The institute is planning to expand its Taitung branch and set up another research park in central Taiwan. The new research campus will work with the Council of Agriculture on such fields as greenhouse engineering and plant factories. (HZW)
Write to Audrey Wang at audrey@mail.gio.gov.tw