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Achievements |
Serving as a platform with architecture, electrical engineering and computer science, creative design, intelligent property, management and other different fields for breakthrough, TBTC has successfully brought Taiwan Tech to move forward to more than 100 rankings in world university rankings.  There were SCI papers published and technology transfer profit earned by TBTC double increased annually over the past five years.

The overall performance of Taiwan Tech is dynamic enough to attract attentions nationwide and worldwide.  Achievements and features are summarized as follows:  

  1. Distinguished Research Teams
    2. To show the determination of Taiwan Tech to promote TBTC to be a world-class research center on building technology, President Shi-Shuenn Chen will be the director of TBTC to lead a group of world renowned research teams. Distinguished researchers currently residing on campus are as follows:



    • Prof. Alfredo H-S Ang, a member of the US National Academy of Engineering, is leading a research team on life cycle engineering.
    • Prof. Kenji Ishihara, an overseas associate of the US National Academy of Engineering, is leading a research team on landslide hazard mitigation.
    • Prof. Toyoko Imae, a member of the Japanese Academy of Science, is leading a research team on advanced green technology.
    • Prof. Koung-An Chao, a member the Swedish Academy of Science, is leading a research team on efficient energy building.
    • Prof. Ming Luo, a chair professor at the University of Leeds, is leading a research team on color and illumination.
    • Prof. Sheng-Jin Chen, a recipient of the TECO Technology Award, is leading a research team on high-rise building seismic protection.
    • Prof. Bing-Joe Hwang, a recipient of the Far East Technology Award, is leading a research team on green energy research.
    • Prof. Chin-Chun Tsai, a recipient of Department of Humanities and Social Sciences Award from MOE, is leading a research team on creative and digital learning.
    • Prof. Ging-Jyi Wu, a chair professor at the National Chengchi University, is leading a research team on innovative research.


  2. Outstanding Technology Transfer to Industry
    3. In recent five years, there are more than 200 patents and 120 cases of technology transfer.  Annually the profits earned from patent and technology transfers are about 22 million NT dollars on average.  According to the National Science Council (NSC) statistics from 2001 to 2010, the income of annual technology transfer was ranked first nationally among all universities. Five representative and influential technology transfer cases are summarized as follows:

    Building Structure: "Earthquake Resistant Beam-to-Column Connection for Steel Structure" is successfully applied to Taipei 101 and about 200 high-rise buildings in the world, which has made significant contributions to safety of residents' lives and earthquake-resistance of buildings.  Based on the NSC statistics, this patent is the most profitable one over years.

    Building Materials: The "3-in-1 Solar Energy Glass" has the functions of heat insulation, power generation and self cleaning.  This new solar energy glass outperforms any other similar products in the world and has been used in several public building projects such as the Eco-City in Malaysia, 2010 Taipei Floral Exhibition-American Pavilion, EGA House-an intelligent green building, and other private projects. This 3-in-1 solar glass has been covered by Discovery Channel twice in recent years. European Union also shows a great interest in this product and is expecting a large market demand.

    Ventilation: The "Air-Curtain Fume Hood" is a product which is superior to the similar products from the University of California-Berkeley. It can effectively exclude the toxic gases and have great benefits to enhance the laboratory safety, the performance of future home range hood, and the quality of life. In addition, it saves 50% energy consumption and reduces production costs by 20%. Technologies of this product are already successfully transferred to companies in Taiwan, Japan, the United States and other countries in the world.

    Lighting: The "SunLego" can collect natural light and guide it indoors as the source for illumination. It consists of cascadable passive unites, with Mitsubishi mirror and enhanced optical coatings to increase lighting collection efficiency, coupling into fibers or reflective units. It has been successfully used in Pavilion of Dreams in 2010 Taipei Flora Exposition and has great potential to be commercialized.

    Energy-Saving: Using the groundwater circulation well, it is able to eliminate all the exhaust heat from air conditioner to the air and significantly reduce the heat island effect in Taipei basin during summer time. In addition, using a cooler groundwater as the cooling medium is able to reduce the power consumption of the air conditioner up to 40% and reduce the equipment space by 98%. Best of all, it generates no noise and is very friendly to the neighbors.

  3. Structure and Hazard Prevention of Building
    4. Taiwan Tech established the first large-scale structure test chamber and the first earthquake simulation shaking table.  Recently, a national largest structure testing lab was established jointly with Alga Engineering Company and Politecnico di Milano of Italy.  With the support of world-class test equipments, the structural research team of Taiwan Tech has developed many parents on steel structure, steel reinforced concrete structures, earthquake resistance, and construction safety related fields.  It earns great reputation internationally and takes the lead nationally.

    High-Performance Steel Structure: In addition to the earthquake resistant Beam-to-Column Connection patent for steel structure and High-Performance Concrete patent for RC structure, more structure related patents have been granted such as Buckling Inhibited Brace Element, Energy Dissipation Element of the Low Yield Point Steel Shear Panel, and SRC beam-column joints. Moreover, Taiwan Tech and China Steel Corporation have jointly established a R&D center for steel structure and will invest more than 10 million NT dollars annually to further develop key technologies for steel structure building and then transfer it to the construction industry.

    Hazard Prevention for Hillside Housing: To avoid another occurrence of the landslide tragedies and dip slope landslide occurred in Expressway No. 3, the slope research team has held several workshops and invited experts from Hong Kong, Japan, and the US to exchange experiences on landslide prevention. Taiwan Tech has its own landslide test site in Keelung and has been carrying out the slope observation for more than 15 years. The results generated from the Keelung test site has contributed to the landslide mitigation program for Keelung City Government. Recently, Taiwan Tech slope team also took the responsibility to investigate the causes of dip slope landslide occurred in Expressway No. 3 and killed four people. A long term and series of slope stabilization program has been proposed by Taiwan Tech slope team and adopted by the government for the national expressways and highways.

    Fire Prevention for Building: The building fire test field of Taiwan Tech has been active in running building fire related research and has accumulated a great deal of experience against fire hazards. Based on the test results, the performance based design specifications of fire prevention was proposed through a joint research project of Taiwan Tech, Central Police University, and fire prevention authority. Meanwhile, several patents on fire control materials and smoke shielding aspects have been developed. New instruction signs for evacuation from building fire have been developed and published on the Fire Safety Journal. This result will improve to revise the current regulation of fire evacuation signs and to improve the safety against fire.

  4. Achievements of Intelligent Green Building
    5. By integrating with ICT technology, intelligent building can provide an upgraded function of building and a good living and working environment for the residents. TBTC is to offer a platform for the integration of technologies developed in Taiwan Tech. The new TBTC building in Taiwan Tech (figure1.1) and the EGA House (figure1.2) in Architecture and Building Research Institute, Ministry of the Interior, are used as the integrated experiment and demonstration platform for the components and devices of intelligent green building. By combining the traditional materials and ICT control units, the intelligent building components, such as smart window, smart lighting etc., can be developed. To improve the living quality of people and to benefit the building industry, the intelligent building components developed by the TBTC research teams will be promoted to the public and the industry as well. The important achievements in recent years are described as follows.
Figure 1.1 TBTC Figure
Figure 1.2 EGA House
    Information Network Platform: The information network is divided into the wired system and wireless system. Both play important roles for the sensing system of intelligent building. As for the wired broadband network, the intelligent building information network platform, which is connected with optical fiber, has been granted a large-scale research project from National Science Council. There is a breakthrough achievement in key technology of new generation passive photo network, which has been presented in ECOC 2007 Conference. As for the wireless network, the non-competitive media retrieving control protocol has been designed and the whole network transmitting rate has been increased greatly. It can be applied to the large housing complex. Several standards have been proposed and accepted by IEEE 802.11s and 802.16j. Meanwhile, this group has obtained more than 20 million NT dollars research funding from National Science Council.

    RFID Research Center: Integration of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) and sensor network in constructions is one of the key technologies for intelligent building. In recent years, this group has worked with Yuan Foong Yu Paper Manufacturing Company and some other institutes to develop RF technologies for readers and tags in RFID. Also, we have cooperated with Chant Sincere Company to develop the design and manufacturing methods for miniature chip antennas in wireless applications. Several patents for some innovated commercial products have been obtained. In order to further promote RFID research and development together with adjacent academic and research institutes, we have been approved by Ministry of Education to establish "RFID Education and Research Center". A four-year project with more than 8 million NT dollars funding has been granted each year.

    Creativity on Color and Illumination: Due to the therapy effect of color and lighting, four experts and their teams from Leeds University and Chiba University were invited to join the research project of Color and Lighting Creativity.