Fang Ling-yun, a first-year master student of Dept. of Electrical Engineering, honorably won a 3,000-USD Grassroot 2010 Scholarship from United States National Research Council (NSF), and is going to attend the 2010 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA 2010) held by Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) in America at the beginning of May. She will also visit 25 robotics centers at top universities like Stanford University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The theme of the conference is on the amazing achievements of the field and the broad impact of robotics and automation research, development and education. Since this year Taiwan will hold IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), the other important robotics conference in the world, IEEE particularly provided Grassroot 2010 Scholarship to the graduate students of robotics laboratories that have presented papers in ICRA to apply, and Dr. Peter Liu, an assistant professor from Dept. of Electrical Engineering, got the right to nominate for his research paper has been approve by IEEE this academic year. In the end, Dr. Liu recommended Fang from Master’s Program of Robotics Engineering to apply.

“Although I had some research and development experience at FIRA Robo World Cup, I felt like it was impossible to win this scholarship since it was given to only 10 persons,” said Fang. However, she indicated that Dr. Liu’s encouragement made her actively prepare for this valuable chance, and she tried her best to show the examiners her great enthusiasm for learning with limited time offered. “I was very surprised when seeing my name on the list!” Fang expressed. Dr. Wong Ching-chang, Chair, Dept. of Electrical Engineering, also indicated that it was good to get this rare chance. “I believe that this trip can inspire her a lot for her future studies and researches,” said Dr. Wong. ( ~Shu-chun Yen )