Representatives from five high-ranking Taiwanese universities this week toured central and eastern Europe to promote scholarships in semiconductor research aimed at attracting mathematics and physics talent from the region to pursue further studies in Taiwan.
The academic delegation comprised officials from National Taiwan University (NTU), National Cheng Kung University, National Tsing Hua University, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University and National Sun Yat-sen University.
The tour group visited the Czech Republic, Poland and Lithuania, where they held presentations to inform local students about the Taiwan Semiconductor Scholarship Program, said NTU vice president for international affairs Yuan Hsiao-wei (袁孝維), who was part of the delegation.
Photo: Ann Wang, Reuters
The delegation visited Masaryk University in the Czech Republic on Monday last week and the University of Warsaw in Poland on Wednesday, as well as Lithuania’s Kaunas University of Technology on Thursday and Vilnius University on Friday.
The delegation concluded its tour yesterday at the Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava, Slovakia.
The Soviet influence on central and eastern European countries helped students in the region excel in math and physics, Yuan said from Prague on Wednesday.
The delegation has received positive feedback since its first scholarship presentation in the Czech Republic, she said.
The idea to offer central and eastern European students scholarships for semiconductor research — covering tuition fees, stipends and flight tickets — was proposed by the National Development Council following a delegation’s visit to the Czech Republic in October last year.
Information on the Web site of the Taiwan Semiconductor Scholarship Program shows that master’s students enrolled in the program would each get a tuition subsidy of NT$80,000 per academic year, a monthly stipend of NT$25,000 and a round-trip ticket to Taiwan.
Each master’s student involved in the scholarship program would be sponsored for a maximum of two years, with the tuition subsidy, stipends and airfare amounting to a total of no more than 27,000 euros (US$26,960).
As for doctoral students in the program, in addition to the same tuition stipend and round-trip tickets as master’s students, they would receive a monthly stipend of NT$40,000, according to the Web site. Doctoral students could have the scholarship for up to four years and receive a total of 74,000 euros.
However, the number of scholarships has not been finalized by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which finances the program.
Despite interest in the program, European universities have expressed concern that scholarship students might stay and work in Taiwan after graduation, rather than foster semiconductor development in their home countries, Yuan said.
Yuan said that was a possibility, adding that the students could contribute to their home industries if Taiwan invested in the semiconductor industries in those nations.
“The goal of the program is to equip students with adequate know-how about chips and make them internationally competitive,” she said.
The program also marks a new step for Taiwan’s tertiary education sector given that Taiwan’s universities have never had this kind of cooperation with central and eastern Europe before, NTU vice president for academic affairs Stone Ding (丁詩同) said.
The cooperation is a trial, through which each side would get to know the needs of the other and see if there is potential for further cooperation, Ding said.
‘SWASTICAR’: Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s close association with Donald Trump has prompted opponents to brand him a ‘Nazi’ and resulted in a dramatic drop in sales Demonstrators descended on Tesla Inc dealerships across the US, and in Europe and Canada on Saturday to protest company chief Elon Musk, who has amassed extraordinary power as a top adviser to US President Donald Trump. Waving signs with messages such as “Musk is stealing our money” and “Reclaim our country,” the protests largely took place peacefully following fiery episodes of vandalism on Tesla vehicles, dealerships and other facilities in recent weeks that US officials have denounced as terrorism. Hundreds rallied on Saturday outside the Tesla dealership in Manhattan. Some blasted Musk, the world’s richest man, while others demanded the shuttering of his
Taiwan’s official purchasing managers’ index (PMI) last month rose 0.2 percentage points to 54.2, in a second consecutive month of expansion, thanks to front-loading demand intended to avoid potential US tariff hikes, the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. While short-term demand appeared robust, uncertainties rose due to US President Donald Trump’s unpredictable trade policy, CIER president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) told a news conference in Taipei. Taiwan’s economy this year would be characterized by high-level fluctuations and the volatility would be wilder than most expect, Lien said Demand for electronics, particularly semiconductors, continues to benefit from US technology giants’ effort
ADVERSARIES: The new list includes 11 entities in China and one in Taiwan, which is a local branch of Chinese cloud computing firm Inspur Group The US added dozens of entities to a trade blacklist on Tuesday, the US Department of Commerce said, in part to disrupt Beijing’s artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced computing capabilities. The action affects 80 entities from countries including China, the United Arab Emirates and Iran, with the commerce department citing their “activities contrary to US national security and foreign policy.” Those added to the “entity list” are restricted from obtaining US items and technologies without government authorization. “We will not allow adversaries to exploit American technology to bolster their own militaries and threaten American lives,” US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick said. The entities
Minister of Finance Chuang Tsui-yun (莊翠雲) yesterday told lawmakers that she “would not speculate,” but a “response plan” has been prepared in case Taiwan is targeted by US President Donald Trump’s reciprocal tariffs, which are to be announced on Wednesday next week. The Trump administration, including US Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent, has said that much of the proposed reciprocal tariffs would focus on the 15 countries that have the highest trade surpluses with the US. Bessent has referred to those countries as the “dirty 15,” but has not named them. Last year, Taiwan’s US$73.9 billion trade surplus with the US
RSS