《TAIPEI TIMES》 Taiwan awarded at nanotechnology event

By Liu Wan-chun and Jonathan Chin / Staff reporter, with staff writer

A Taiwanese delegation was on April 14 named the best overall performers at the world’s first International Nanotechnology Olympiad held in Tehran.

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The delegation was comprised of students and professors from National Cheng Kung University （NCKU） and National Taiwan University （NTU）.

The event’s theme was water and the competition was divided into four categories: innovation, business, science and technology, and overall performance.

The delegation’s entry, the omniphobic membranes and photocatalysts design toward a near-zero liquid discharge, is a combination of the two universities’ complimentary designs.

The system, said to be inspired by nature, is designed to filter toxic residue from water with a sun-powered catalyst, while utilizing magnetism to capture and recycle the nanoparticles.

While the international engineering olympiad for high-school students is more than a decade old, the International Nanotechnology Olympiad was the first such competition for students from higher-eduction institutions, NCKU said.

The olympiad is to be held biannually to inspire scientific and technical innovation, with a an emphasis on commercialization and encouraging young people to start tech companies, it said.

Taiwan is one of the founding member states of the event, the school added.

The delegation was led by Minister of Education Wu Maw-kuen （吳茂昆） in his capacity as an Academia Sinica member, and its members included NCKU associate professor of engineering Hou Wen-che （侯文哲） and NTU professor of chemical engineering Tung Kuo-lun （童國倫）.

Other nations that sent delegations to the event include Germany, Italy, the UK, South Korea, Malaysia and Russia.

新聞來源：TAIPEI TIMES