TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Last week, a Polish delegation comprised of officials responsible for higher education policy visited Taiwan. Among them was the director of the government-led Copernican Academy Office who was here to confer a Taiwanese university president an honorable title, which the President of the Republic of Poland usually appoints.
Dr. Huey-jen Jenny Su (蘇慧貞), the President of Tainan-based National Cheng Kung University (NCKU), was nominated by the Office of Copernican Academy to serve as a member of the Copernican Academy Chamber of Medical Sciences.
The Copernican Academy is named after Polish mathematician and astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus and works on several projects under the National Copernican Program to encourage interdisciplinary collaboration and foster knowledge exchange. The academy is comprised of 120 outstanding individuals appointed by the Polish President at the request of the country's Minister of Education and Science.
Prior to the honor presented by the academy, Su was already an internationally-acclaimed scientist. Five years ago, she became the first non-U.S. recipient of Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health’s Leadership Award in Public Health Practice and four years ago was named among Nature's science stars of East Asia.
In May, the research university signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Polish Academy of Sciences (PAS) to offer financial and academic support to displaced scholars and graduate students from Ukraine. The project kicked off under the school's "Light the Dark" initiative, which is designed to offer prompt assistance to academics from around the world whose studies are affected by disasters and political unrest, including the war-torn Eastern European nation with grants and research funding for Ukrainian scholars.
Aside from the partnership with PAS, the Taiwanese school, under Su's leadership, has co-authored publications with over 54 Polish higher education institutions and national research centers over the course of five years.
This is the second Polish delegation to visit Taiwan this month, following a delegation of members of Poland's lower house of parliament, whose mission was to further academic collaboration, particularly in the field of technology, between the two countries.
The delegation visited National Taiwan University, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University, National Cheng Kung University, National Central University, National Taipei University of Technology, Taipei Medical University, among other higher education institutions during their four-day trip to Taiwan that ended on Dec. 11.