This year, a total of 27 TKU students successfully applied for National Science Council (NSC) research grants to conduct research projects in their area of specialization. Of these 27 research grants, the College of Engineering received the most, with a total of 17 grants; the Lanyang Campus also received subsidies for the first time (two in total); the College of Management and College of Business each received three grants; the College of Foreign Languages and Literatures and the College of Science also each received one subsidy.

One of the research projects to gain NSC funding was that proposed by Department of Innovative Information and Technology student, Gu Da-wei. Da-wei designed a “Context-aware Mobile Application for Tourism”, which is a search engine distinct from Google that allows users to quickly and directly find a number of specific locations, such as the Lanyang Museum. The software can also be used on mobile applications. Da-wei explains: “after discussions with my professor, I decided to use the Lanyang Museum as a case study for my research. I hope that by using my software, people can become more familiar with the local Lanyang culture”.

Fourth year linguistics student, Jin Guan-fu, plans to conduct research on differences in food etiquette between Eastern and Western cultures. He noted that while in Chinese culture elders are put before youths and even guests; in the West, guests are often placed among elders. Guan-fu will investigate other such cultural disparities in the hope of reducing the chance of conflict due to cultural misunderstanding.