Research Express@NCKU - News Release

Research Express@NCKU Volume 30 Issue 4 - April 1, 2016 [ http://research.ncku.edu.tw/re/news/e/20160401/1.html ] Nobel laureate receives honorary chair professorship from NCKU NCKU Press Center [Tainan, Taiwan, March 10, 2016]

Dr. Akira Suzuki, a Japanese chemist and Nobel Prize Laureate, received honorary chair professorship from National Cheng Kung University (NCKU), Tainan, Taiwan, on March 10.

The honorary chair professorship was conferred on Dr. Suzuki in recognition of his contributions to chemistry, educational achievements as well as his excellent personality.

Upon receiving the certificate of professorship from NCKU President Huey-Jen Jenny Su, Dr. Suzuki expressed his appreciation and highlighted the academic partnership between and Taiwan.

“I’m very happy to accept the honor,” said Dr. Suzuki, “and the purpose is to exchange my chemistry with many people in the university not only discuss and exchange ideas in chemistry but also to build strong contact with people including the students and professors in this university.”

Dr. Suzuki was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2010 for his work on Palladium catalyzed cross coupling reactions, together with Richard F. Heck and Ei-ichi Negishi. Suzuki developed “Suzuki coupling” or “Suzuki- Miyaura reaction” in 1981 with his colleague Norio Miyaura.

Dr. Suzuki studied Chemistry at Hokkaido University. He worked there as an assistant professor after receiving his PhD in 1959. From 1963-65, Suzuki worked as a post doctoral at Purdue University. After returning to Hokkaido University he continued as Professor till 1994. After his retirement from Hokkaido University, he served as Professor Synthetic Organic Chemistry at Okayama University of Science (1994-95) and Kurashiki University (1995-2002).

In addition to the Nobel Prize, Suzuki was also honored with the Chemical Society of Japan Award (1989), The Imperial Prize of the (2004) and the Japanese Order of the Sacred Treasure 2005.

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Research Express@NCKU Volume 30 Issue 4 - April 1, 2016 [ http://research.ncku.edu.tw/re/news/e/20160401/2.html ] Nobel laureate Akira Suzuki gives talk on organic synthesis NCKU Press Center [Tainan, Taiwan, March 14, 2016]

Dr. Akira Suzuki, a Japanese chemist and Nobel Prize Laureate in Chemistry, shared his thoughts about science and his joy of winning the prize with his audience at National Cheng Kung University (NCKU), Tainan, Taiwan, on the afternoon of March 11.

Dr. Suzuki talked about his passion for mathematics as a child, the importance of education, his findings in chemistry, the work that gave him the Nobel Prize, and gave some advice to young students.

He also shared the story about the morning when he received a phone call from the Nobel Foundation and said, “I was surprised and honored by the good news.”

Dr. Suzuki said that he first published the Suzuki reaction in 1979 which is a chemical reaction that uses boronic acids or esters.

He introduced Suzuki coupling to his audience and said, “Suzuki coupling is a short cut to biaryls.”

Suzuki coupling is a form of palladium-catalyzed cross couplings, which is widely used to synthesize poly-olefins, styrenes, and substituted biphenyls, according to Dr. Suzuki.

In his talk, he showed some useful dugs synthesis by Suzuki coupling, including anti-HIV drugs, antibiotics, and anti- inflammatory drugs and some applications of Suzuki coupling as well.

Many professors, students and people in the university community came to listen to Dr. Suzuki’s talk.

A chemistry student, Lee, said, “Suzuki reaction gives every chemist an easier way to achieve carbon coupling with higher purity and yield.”

Lee asked Dr. Suzuki a question: What did your life change after receiving the Nobel Prize? “My life hasn’t changed at all,” responded Dr. Suzuki with a warm smile.

Branson Zheng also from the Department of Chemistry shared his thoughts about Suzuki reaction saying, “This reaction is so important because it can direct the reagent to certain site, reduce the steps of complicate reaction and make the yield much better."

"Without this study, some medicine component or OLED might not be synthesized that easy, and the pharmacy or electronic industry will still have some trouble to produce their products," he added.

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Research Express@NCKU Volume 30 Issue 4 - April 1, 2016 [ http://research.ncku.edu.tw/re/news/e/20160401/3.html ] NCKU, Delta jointly set up research center for smart fish farming NCKU Press Center [Tainan, Taiwan, March 17, 2016]

A research center for smart fish farming will be set up at National Cheng Kung University's Annan Campus, aiming to optimize farming systems with technology and smart management, revealed the university on Wednesday.

The joint effort was initiated by National Cheng Kung University (NCKU) and Delta Electronics, Inc. which is a major power management supplier in Taiwan.

NCKU President Huey-Jen Jenny Su said at the press conference on March 16, “Food safety and food sufficiency are global issues, and the economic potential of this partnership will bring more opportunities to fish farming and other sectors in Taiwan.

Delta's founder and honorary chairman Bruce Cheng expressed hopes that the industry academia cooperative project will bring forth new technology beneficial to the industry in general, as well as provide cost•effective solutions to issues regarding food safety and the environment.

Cheng also said that with climate change and a growing frequency of natural disasters, many fish farms lack an understanding of their surroundings and continue to emit toxic water, damaging the environment.

NCKU Dean of the College of Bioscience and Technology Prof. Chu•Fan Lo said her research team has developed a species of tiger prawns that is entirely resistant to white spot disease, and by transferring the know•how to businesses they could prevent massive deaths of infected prawn in the future.

The first prawn cultivation project aims to develop a species of tiger prawn that is “safe and poison•free,” according to Prof. Lo.

The Delta executive said they would utilize the combined knowledge of their technological understanding of the Internet of Things and the research done by the NCKU biology department's research teams to solve problems.

The firm said it would provide its various resources, from renewable energy, auto monitoring systems, work place safety, biological disease control, image sensor systems, data storage systems and computer algorithms.

President Su stated the school had cooperated with Delta eight years ago, and the research center marks the beginning of a completely new, pioneering cooperation model.

“Optimizing farming systems with technology and smart management will make a significant contribution to the next wave in business,” added President Su.

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Research Express@NCKU Volume 30 Issue 4 - April 1, 2016 [ http://research.ncku.edu.tw/re/news/e/20160401/4.html ] NCKU professor’s research on climatic variability published in Science NCKU Press Center [Tainan, Taiwan, March 25, 2016]

Climate variability increases with global warming but very little is known about how species adapt to it. National Cheng Kung University (NCKU) professor Dr. I-Ching Chen working with scientists from proposed that long-term and short-term climatic variabilities affect species in opposite ways.

This finding challenged the classic ecological hypothesis to provide a clear roadmap to understand how species adapt to climatic variabilities, Chen reported at a press conference Friday.

The research was published in the journal Science on March 24, 2016.

This study challenged a well-known macrophysiological rule－Climatic Variability Hypothesis (CVH), which suggests that greater variability selects for organisms with broader tolerances, enabling them to be geographically widespread.

“We bring a novel perspective that temporal scale actually matters and short-term climatic variability favors physiological specialist,” said Chen.

She noted, “In fact, short term variability, such as daily temperature range (DTR), dominants the majority of the earth surface but the ecological implication has seldom been discussed. It’s very likely that there are more specialist species than we expected and they are particularly vulnerable to climate change.”

Talking about her field research, Chen said, “We have been investigated species distribution, breeding performance and competition along elevation gradient in Taiwan, using burying beetle as target species. We found that daily temperature range is crucial to determine their range limits, hence range size, through changing species competition and breeding performance.”

“However, DTR has seldom been covered in ecological theories and we wondered whether this finding could be generalized. That’s why we started to investigate and re-exam the macrophysiological rule in determining species range size,” she added.

Chen, whose research interests are global change biology, macroecology, and dendroclimatology, said, Mechanistic understanding of species distribution and range shift is crucial to investigate biological responses under climate change.

The pattern of climatic variability features a large proportion of the rapid climate change, Chen noted, “and our finding will have important implication for not only fundamental ecology but also human wellbeing issues related to species distribution such as invasion and spread of vector-borne diseases.”

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Chen, a life sciences professor at NCKU, is currently leading a biology laboratory for climate change to explore issues on adaptive mechanism and altered species interaction under climate change, especially the vulnerability of tropical montane cloud forest.

She said, Taiwan is dominant by mountains, where host high biodiversity and is easy to access. The elevational gradient serves as natural lab as we experience significant temperature change and observe species turnover in short distance.

This enables us to conduct extensive field work and manipulation experiments to understand interaction of biotic and abiotic factors involving in many ecological phenomena, Chen noted.

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