A total of 43 academics from home and abroad including countries such as Singapore, the U.K. and the U.S. were named as recipients of funding under the Yushan Scholar and Young Scholar programs July 28 by the Ministry of Education.
All awardees will be affiliated with one of 12 tertiary educations across the country, the MOE said. These include National Taiwan University in Taipei City; National Chiao Tung University and National Tsing Hua University in the northern city of Hsinchu; and National Cheng Kung University in the southern city of Tainan.
One notable recipient is 45-year-old Stephen Payne, a professor in the Department of Engineering Science at U.K.-based University of Oxford. His research interests include biomedical engineering, in particular modelling cerebral blood flow and metabolism.
According to NTU, with which Payne has chosen to partner, the British scholar is ideally placed to promote interdisciplinary research in subjects such as biomedicine, computer simulation, engineering and mathematics. Given his role as chair of the global Cerebral Autoregulation Research Network, Payne is also expected to help bring the body’s annual conference to Taiwan, the university added.
Launched in April 2018 and named after Taiwan’s highest mountain, the Yushan Scholar and Young Scholar programs are designed to recruit and retain high-level academic talent to enhance the country’s competitiveness and research capabilities. Recipients must have a proven record of research achievement in arts and humanities, engineering, life sciences and agriculture, medicine, sciences or social studies.
Yushan scholars receive between NT$3 million (US$101,688) and NT$5 million in annual incentives on top of their monthly salary for a period of three years, while young scholars receive between NT$500,000 and NT$1.5 million annually over five years. (SFC-E)
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