National Cheng Kung University excels in research. This list of winners of 2008 National Science Council (NSC) Outstanding Research Award was recently leased. Among the total of 35 winners, 3 are professors from NCKU, including Distinguished Professor, Dr. Tong-Yee Lee of Computer Science and Information Engineering, Distinguished Professor, Dr. Jo-Shu Chang of Chemical Engineering and Dr. Sun-Yuan Hsieh from Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering and Institute of Medical Informatics. Each winner would receive $500 thousand New Taiwan Dollars, which was not only considerable encouragement, but also a clear recognition for the professors who have been extremely devoted to research for a long time.

Distinguished Professor, Dr. Tong-Yee Lee of Computer Science and Information Engineering, specializes in 3D game design, 3D non-photo-realistic rendering, computer graphics and animation, visualization, virtual reality and environment, 3D medical surgical simulation and application, and image -base and point rendering.

One of Dr. Tong-Yee Lee's innovative a paper, titled "Self-Animating Images: Illusory Motion Using Repeated Asymmetric Patterns," regarding an automatic method of generating self-animating images was selected as ACM SIGGRAPH 2008 Program Highlights Papers. The SIGGRAPH 2008 Technical Papers Program is the premier international forum for presenting the world's best research innovations within the computer graphics industry, papers on which were deemed as having a dynamic impact on the entertainment and film industries.

Distinguished Professor Jo-Shu Chang of Chemical Engineering specializes in bio-energy production, including biohydrogen, bioethanol, biodiesel and methane. His research team has developed the most efficient hydrogen production bioreactor, so-called "Carrier-induced granular sludge bed; CIGSB". He has published over 150 academic articles on world-renowned journals and his papers have been cited for more than 1360 times. He was also invited as a guest editor for the 2007 International Journal of Hydrogen Energy, which has been viewed as the most prestigious international journal on hydrogen generation, storage and economics.

Having devoted himself on upgrading bio-energy technique, developing bio-energy production with commercial values and promoting the competitiveness of bio-energy industries, Dr. Chang has been in collaboration with industries and government agencies on patent transfer.

Dr. Sun-Yuan Hsieh's research covers fault-tolerant computing, bioinformatics, parallel and distributed computing, design and analysis of algorithms, and graph theory with an especial focus on "subgraph optimization problem" that is considered as the most difficult program in graphics. His outstanding achievement on research has been published on prestigious journal on mathematical and formal aspects of computer science and nonnumerical computing, such as SIAM Journal, and Journal of Algorithms.

Professor Hsieh has been given with many honors, such as the 2000 Outstanding Scientists of the 21st Century conferred by the International Biographical Association, England, research award from NSC and award from the Chinese Society of Mechanical Engineers. He also served as an instructor for our national delegation in International Mathematical Olympiad, which won a gold medal, one silver medal and one copper medal in 2003.

NSC Outstanding Research Award is set to encourage and award outstanding researchers of science and to raise the research level and the academic status of Taiwan in the world. This award is given out to only 35 winners every year and everyone can only be awarded once in a lifetime. The award winners must be those who have made major contributions to national construction, industrial upgrading or scientific education, or they should be those who have obtained national and international patents for some significant research results, or their papers are published in highly acclaimed academic journals and are very innovative. This award is a very high honor and a clear recognition for a researcher.