Cham Pion Incubation Center (CPIC) has been dedicating in combining businesses with academic research ever since its inception over 10 years ago. Every year it showcases its efforts at various occasions and places, but this is the first year the Center chose TKU as the exhibition ground. The exhibition of successful “marriages” between entrepreneurship and research was held at the Exhibition Hall of the Business and Management Building on 9/Nov, displaying products or ideas that have been the results of such cooperation. It also provided opportunity for some researchers to have direct contact with businesses for potential future cooperation.

You Bu Bing, the project manager of CPIC explained that their center is working on making business and research cooperation even more substantial. The center plans to adopt a model Stanford and Yale have been doing very successfully which is to encourage TKU researchers to actively commercialize their inventions. Through this, entrepreneurship can be created on campus. Furthermore, the long term goal of the center is to incubate healthy and competitive small to medium sized companies in business.

In the exhibition, both businesses and TKU’s researchers presented their products and inventions. Among the exhibitors, Kuo Zhe Cheng from Algolware Company who is one of the businesses that stations in Tamkang, likes the creativity he sees in TKU’s research. For instance, he thinks the humanoid robots that play soccer are brilliant inventions. Chang Yuan-chung of 500net Technology Company is impressed by some of the ideas about sound and visual quality enhancement developed by TKU researchers. He is excited about further cooperation with the university.

The researchers that exhibited their ideas and inventions included Prof. Kang Shung Wen who has been developing more efficient street lamps powered by LED technology. He is negotiating with the university to have these lamps installed on campus as a pilot project. He emphasized that these lamps have been tested on carefully designed computer simulations in their lab and now they need real testing ground and university is an ideal place for that. Another professor, Huang Lain Jinn, who exhibited his wireless product, is positive about the exhibition as it allows researchers to meet businesses face to face for better cooperation.

Students aside, visitors to the exhibitions included some well-established entrepreneurs and researchers from China: Lui Po Horng, the deputy CEO of Yahoo Shopping China, and Wang Cheng, the Dean of the College of Engineering and Business from China University of Petroleum. They were all impressed by the scope and quality of business pluses research cooperation instigated by CPIC. Dr. Kang Shung Wen, who is also the Dean of TKU R & D Office, is upbeat about such exhibition and urged more teachers from TKU to display their ideas so as to find commercial incentives. ( ~Ying-hsueh Hu )