NTNU and Kyushu University’s Collaboration Development Fund – 7 professors awarded research grants
National Taiwan Normal University and Kyushu University, NTNU's sister school and strategic partner, established the Collaboration Development Fund in 2019 to strengthen collaborative efforts between the two schools in terms of academic research and curriculum implementation. Due to the positive response from the inaugural run of the program, the schools conducted another call for proposals for the Collaboration Development Fund in 2020 and received 15 submissions, which were reviewed by a panel comprising representatives from both schools. After the review, a total of 7 projects were selected to receive the research grant.
The Collaboration Development Fund established by NTNU and Kyushu University is a research program promoting collaboration between faculty members. Under this program, faculty members from the two schools can jointly propose academic research projects. Selected projects will receive grants from their respective schools, the amount of which will be matched in both universities. Due to the large number of submissions received this year, the quote for projects receiving the grant has been raised from 5 to 7. These projects cover diverse research fields, including Chemistry, Life Sciences, Science Education, Physics, Taiwanese Languages and Literature, and Geography.
The close collaborative ties between NTNU and Kyushu University can be traced back to the beginning of 2015, when NTNU's Department of Chemistry, under the College of Science, chose the Department of Chemistry of Kyushu University to be its academic benchmark. In 2016, Nikky Lin, Chairman of the Department of Taiwan Culture, Languages, and Literature, launched a three-year Kyushu Taiwan Studies Program at Kyushu University. In 2017, NTNU and Kyushu University signed an agreement on academic collaboration between the Colleges of Science, Engineering, Pharmacy, and the Institute for Materials Chemistry and Engineering. On top of that, the NTNU College of Education worked with Kyushu University to jointly present a course titled Issue in Research into Comparative Education: Constructing Identity and Otherness in Education taught fully in English. During the academic conference organized by the two universities and held in Kyushu University in October 2018, President Kubo and President Wu represented their respective schools to sign a university-level MOU that promotes academic and student exchanges between the two schools. In May 2019, a forum with the theme Facilitating Interdisciplinary Research and Education was jointly organized by NTNU and Kyushu University and held in NTNU's auditorium. The schools also took that opportunity to prepare to row out the Collaboration Development Fund. At the end of October 2019, Vice President Lee Chung Mou led a group of administrators on a visit to Kyushu University and widened the scope of collaboration between the two schools beyond academics. The partnership was broadened to also cover exchanges between the schools' administrative systems as well as at the corporate level.
The projects awarded the 2020 Collaboration Development Fund given out by the NTNU and Kyushu University are as follow:
| S/N | University | Department | Principal investigator | Title | Project title |
| 1 | NTNU | Department of Chemistry | Lin Cheng-Huang | Professor | Development of an analytical instrument for determination of acetone in human breath |
| Kyushu University | Department of Environmental Design | Tomoko Imasaka | Lecturer | ||
| 2 | NTNU | Department of Chemistry | Lee Way-Zen | Professor | Synthesis of bio-inspired catalyst and material for energy production and green molecular transformation |
| Kyushu University | Department of Applied Chemistry | Hisashi Shimakoshi | Professor | ||
| 3 | NTNU | Department of Life Science | Lin Chung-Ping | Professor and Head of Taiwan International Graduate Program - Ph.D. Program on Biodiversity | Taxonomy of treehoppers and ant-associated scarab beetles |
| Kyushu University | The Kyushu University Museum | Munetoshi Maruyama | Associate Professor | ||
| 4 | NTNU | Department of Earth Sciences/Graduate Institute of Science Education | Chang Chun-yen | Honorary Lecturer and Director of Science Education Center | NTNU-KU collaboration on e-learning research and development |
| Kyushu University | Innovation Center for Educational Resource (ICER)/Kyushu University Library | Yoshihiro Okada | Professor | ||
| 5 | NTNU | Department of Physics | Lan Yann-Wen | Associate Professor | Spin-valleytronic switch by using twisted light coupled with Co-MoS2 heterostructure |
| Kyushu University | Department of Physics | Takashi Kimura | Professor | ||
| 6 | NTNU | International Taiwan Studies Center | Ann Heylen | Professor | Identity politics in East Asian popular culture: Taiwan, Japan and China |
| Kyushu University | Department of Education | Vickers Edward Anthony | Professor | ||
| 7 | NTNU | Department of Geography | Liaw Shyue-Cherng | Professor and Associate Dean, College of Liberal Arts | Research on the integration of forest therapy into regional revitalization: case studies in Japan and Taiwan |
| Kyushu University | Department of Agro-environmental Sciences | Satō Noriko | Professor and Head of Department |