I-Chun Catherine Chang 張儀君 

Dr. Chang is an urban and economic geographer. She is Assistant Professor of Geography at Macalester College. Catherine received her B.A. in Geography from National Kaohsiung Normal University, M.Sc. in Geography from National Taiwan University, and Ph.D. in Geography, Environment and Society from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. Her research interests include global urbanism, urban sustainability, policy mobility and East Asia. Catherine’s scholarship focuses on the political economy of urban sustainability initiatives. Applying qualitative methods, she seeks to contextualize how these initiatives manifest on the ground, and investigate how the complex connectivities of individual initiatives shape the global circulation of sustainable planning knowledge and practices. In articles related to or extending from her doctoral dissertation, Catherine focused on two flagship Chinese eco-cities to examine their spatio-temporal variegations and the trans-local policy mobilities across Shanghai, Tianjin, London and Singapore. In addition, new field research explores the uneven impact of eco-city development on the relocated villagers and the new eco-city residents. Catherine’s current research investigates how new globally circulating green financing models affect local urban sustainability practices, with a specific focus on cities in Taiwan. 

Han-Jung Ko (Koko) 柯涵容

Dr. Ko is an education faculty member at Central Michigan University.  She graduated from National Taiwan University with a bachelor’s degree in psychology in 2006, and University of Southern California with a master’s degree in Gerontology in 2010, where she began her research interest in aging stereotypes (i.e., ageism), personality development, and purpose in life through surveys and life stories. She completed her doctoral degree in Human Development and Family Studies from Oregon State University in 2015, with a concentration in Gerontology. In August 2015, Koko joined Central Michigan University as an assistant professor in Gerontology. Koko was responsible for recruiting community members, assisting the curriculum design, and evaluating a sustainable plan for all programs, with a special focus on the health and well-being of older adults. Moreover, she started a survey and interview study to understand the life stories of Taiwanese Americans and Canadians who were blacklisted by the KMT government and explore ways how they make sense of the blacklisted experiences. It was awarded with the NATPA Prof. Liao Research Award in 2017. In summer 2018, she moved back to Seattle to join her family and is currently teaching online gerontology courses for Central Michigan University as an adjunct faculty. Koko is passionate about changing the aging stereotypes among younger and older adults, promoting intergenerational programs, and researching the paths people of all walks find purpose in life. She is committed to educating students and others to have a positive impact on our aging society.

Hsing-Hua Sylvia Lin 林杏樺

Dr. Lin is a health data scientist at the Epidemiology Data Center at the University of Pittsburgh. She majored in public health at the Taipei Medical School, received an MS in occupational health from the National Taiwan University, and received a Ph.D. in epidemiology in June 2017 from the University of Pittsburgh. Her research interest includes chronic liver disease, causal inference, child abuse and neglect, and patient-reported outcomes. She has had more than 8 years of epidemiological research experience in designing, conducting, interpreting statistical analyses, and preparing scientific manuscripts. Throughout her career, she received numerous national and intuitional awards, including Foreign Education Training Grant from the Taiwan Ministry of Education (2013), Distinguished Graduate Student Paper Award from the Taiwan Epidemiology Association (2013), Katherine Detre Scholar Award from the Epidemiology Data Center at the University of Pittsburgh (2014-2016), and Delta Omega Dissertation Award from the US National Honors Society in Public Health (2018).       

After receiving her Ph.D. degree, she has been working as a health data scientist and epidemiologist at the Epidemiology Data Center for a multicenter Hepatitis B Research Network (HBRN) for three years. She has made great strides in chronic hepatitis B virus (HBV) research and published publications with various topics including novel treatment strategies for immune tolerant patients, antiviral drug resistance variants, patient-reported outcomes, and co-infection of hepatitis B and E virus. She collaborated with hepatologists and others from 28 different clinical sites to learn more about people with HBV infection seen at those clinics in both the United States and Canada. This network conducts two observational studies and three clinical trials of HBV treatments. HBRN has been funded by the US National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Disease for more than 10 years.

Aside from her academic career, she attended the 2017 NATPA meeting as a young scholar to present “ LGBTQIA+ Equality and Rights in Taiwan”. She assisted CP Yeh and Li-Lin Cheng to coordinate and moderate NATPA Young Scholar Program in 2018 and 2019. 黑潮之聲 (Kuroshio Focus) was initiated by several 2017 NATPA young scholars to provide a new platform for scholars to publish articles on various topics. In 2019, I assisted Hsin-Hsuan Lin to fundraise from NATPA. Thanks to strong support from generous NATPA members, she was able to build a new website for 黑潮之聲 and Hsin-Hsuan recruited more young scholars to join the team. Many new young scholars from 2018 and 2019 NATPA meetings have published their presentations as articles on this website. I became a long-term NATPA member in 2019 and actively introduced NATPA to local young scholars in Pittsburgh. She looks forward to serving on the NATPA board along with other outstanding board members to achieve NATPA missions which are to promote scientific and professional knowledge and advocate the visibility and reputation of Taiwan’s democracy, economics, science, technology, culture, and human rights in the US and worldwide.

Chin B. Su 蘇成彬

Dr. Su retired from Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Texas A & M University in 2017 as a Professor Emeritus. Currently, he claims himself to be a dedicated househusband, a reluctance shelter-in-place tourist, a novice political writer, a leisurely but spouse-despised slacker and dotard.

He holds a Badge of Honor for being blacklisted by the KMT regime in 1975, in which he cowardly dared not return to Taiwan until 1992.

His fields of research included semiconductor lasers, fiber optic sensors, nanolithography, plasma resonance sensors, and super- resolution microscopy. His research was funded by DARPA, NSF, THECB, GTE, and Rockwell International. He published 125 journal articles and conference papers. Prior to his teaching and research career at Texas A&M University that began in 1987, he worked, from 1986-1987, for Rockwell International in the production of semiconductor lasers. From 1978-1979, he worked for Northrop Corporation as a gyroscope engineer before transitioning to GTE Laboratories (now Verizon) in 1979 to work on fiber optic telecommunications and semiconductor lasers. He received the GTE’s Leslie H. Warner Technical Achievement Award for the development of high-speed semiconductor lasers, Haliburton Award for technical excellence, and he was a TEES Fellow.

He received his PhD in Condensed Matter Physics from Brandeis University in 1978 (useless PhD subject at the time). He graduated from Chung-Yuan College with a BS degree in Physics in 1969 (the now infamous Taiwan’s vassal university of the CCP), and from National Tsinghua University with a MS degree in physics in 1970 (more appropriately translated as: Sino-Clearing University). 

 A career-changing event is worth mentioning. In 1986, He harangued his GTE laboratories' boss with unspeakable epithets over research credits. To his surprise, the shouting match earned him respect and friendship from colleagues and upper managements, as evident by congratulatory plaudits received after the verbally abusive incident-- and the subsequent maintenance of communications with colleagues that last to this day. After transitioning to academia, both GTE Laboratories and Rockwell International substantially funded his research projects.

A valuable lesson learnt from the aforementioned career-changing and seemly embarrassing episode: "Don’t be shy and fight for what you genuinely deserve."