by Tun-Cheng Chien

After the successful student conference last year, 2017 The Second ACS Taiwan Chapter Graduate Student Conference was continued as a tradition of the ACS Tai- wan chapter and was co-organized by Chemical Society Located in Taipei (CSLT), and Departments of Chemistry of both National Taiwan University (NTU) and National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU). The organizing committee was headed by Chair- person  Professor  Jye-Shane  Yang  (NTU)  and  composed  by  Professors  Tun-Cheng Chien (NTNU), Tsung‐Shing A. Wang (NTU, coordinator for org. chem.), Yi‐Hsin Liu (NTNU, coordinator for inorg. chem.), I‐Ren Lee (NTNU, coordinator for phys. chem.) and Wei‐Ssu Liao (NTU, coordinator for anal. chem.). The conference was held at Department of Chemistry, NTU in Taipei on Sunday May 7, 2017.

The conference was hosted and organized by junior faculty volunteers who also offered the opportunity as scientific mentors and carrier counselors for student participants. The objective of the conference was to provide a forum to bring together outstanding young scholars to practice scientific writing and presentation skills, to promote chemistry research in related areas, and to enhance collaboration. The participants were limited to graduate students from chemical science-related departments or institutes in Taiwan. A total numbers of forty two students submitted the abstracts to participate oral and poster presentations and student volunteers and audiences from NTU and NTNU registered to attend the conference. In addition, the organizing committee invited 12 enthusiastic young scholars/professors to serve as referees and commentators for the students’ presentations to invigorate the conference.

The student conference started with the opening remarks delivered by Prof. J.-S. Yang to welcome all the participants and addressed the establishment and mission of the ACS Taiwan Chapter. Prof. T.-C. Chien introduced all the referees to the audience and explained the guidelines for all the presenters. The conference was held in three parallel sections. Nevertheless, a wide diversity of scientific contents of the interdis- ciplinary chemistry was involved in the conference.

The oral presentations were limited to 15 minutes with additional 3 minutes for taking questions and answering. Twenty five students participated the oral presentation to deliver the speeches in English. Meanwhile, all the poster presenters were requested to make a one-minute quick talk in English with non-stop slideshow to briefly describe the poster contents. Afterwards, the poster section was held in the atrium and seventeen posters were displayed with heated discussions lasted till the end of the session.

Prior to the poster section/coffee break, an industrial section was sponsored by Everlight Chemical Industrial Corp. and was presented by Dr. Wen-Jeng Chen, Head of R&D Center. Everlight Chemical is the leading industrial manufacturer specialized in color/dye chemicals in Taiwan. Meanwhile, they have broad product lines in various specialty chemicals including pharmaceutical and electronic materials. Dr. Chen in- troduced the general situation and prospect of the company and his precious expe- rience in the industrial R&D to the students. The industrial presentation received broad attention from student audience.

After the scientific program completed, all the participants were invited to at- tend two special talks before the award ceremony. The first invited talk was the key- note speech sponsored by iGroup Taiwan and was delivered by Dr. Wei-Yan Miguel Li, Director of Academic Writing Education Center, NTU. The title of Dr. Li’s speech was “Present Your Academic Research Creatively”. She summarized the common mistakes and provided general strategies in scientific presentation based on her teaching ex- perience with Science-majored students. Dr. Li prepared a handout for the students and kindly offered her powerpoint file to the participants. The non-scientific presen- tation has successfully attracted the students’ interest and was great helpful to all the participants.

The conference organized a special lecture given by the recipient of 2016 Excel- lent Oral Presentation Award, Mr. Wei-Chun Liu. Mr. Liu is currently a M.S. student in the Department of Chemistry, National Taiwan University, Taipei. He shared his first attendance to the ACS national meeting with vivid slide shows. His trip to San Fran- cisco meeting was partially sponsored by ACS Taiwan Chapter.

The award ceremony was scheduled at the end of the conference day. A total number of 15 oral presenters were selected for Excellent Oral Presentation and 5 poster presenters were selected for Excellent Poster Presentations. All the awardees received the Award Certificates and gift vouchers sponsored by ACS Taiwan. Finally, Prof. Yang gave the closing remarks to conclude the successful conference.

The ACS Taiwan Chapter initiated the student conference for the students to experience the English-speaking scientific program. The one-day conference was overall successful and will be continuously held annually. The next conference is pro- jected to be held in the first weekend of May, 2018 and we look forward to more graduate students and faculty to participate the event.

Acknowledgment

The organizing committee would like to acknowledge the generous financial supports from ACS Committee on International Activities, ACS Chemical Abstracts Service, Everlight Chemical Industrial Co., iGroup Taiwan, and Bruker Taiwan Co., Ltd., as well as the continuous assistance and support from CSLT, NTU and NTNU.