News

On December 7, 2016, Chair Professor Ovid J.L. Tzeng received a formal letter from Prof. Dr. H. C. Felix Unger, President of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts, to inform him of his election as Member of this august body. President Unger also invited Board Member Tzeng to journey to Salzburg in March 2017 in order to receive a medal honoring this achievement, as well as devote future efforts to the causes of promoting the Academy’s new NEXT EUROPE project and the Alma Mater Europaea program dedicated to cultivating young talent. Prof. Tzeng has dedicated himself to the support of scholarship in the European Region. The Foundation is deeply proud of his outstanding achievements.

Prof. Tzeng earned his doctorate in educational psychology from Penn State's College of Education in 1973. He now serves in the government of the Republic of China (ROC, also known as Taiwan) in the Executive Yuan, the nation's highest administrative organ, as a minister without portfolio.

An internationally recognized scholar, Tzeng is a leading pioneer in cognitive neuroscientific studies of the Chinese language and is renowned for his extensive analysis of cognition and the memory system. He was the first Penn Stater to be an elected academician of the Academia Sinica, the most prominent academic institution in Taiwan.

Tzeng oversees Taiwan's Ministry of Education, Ministry of Cultural Affairs, Ministry of Sport, National News agency, and the Office of Tourism. Following his graduation from Penn State, Tzeng worked at the University of California, Riverside, rising to the rank of professor of psychology. Moving back to the ROC in the 1990s, he served as a faculty member, department chair, and dean at National Chung Cheng University, then as vice-president, Chair Professor at National Taiwan Normal University and president at National Yang-Ming University.