NTU–NCKU Team the Top Winner at International Nanotechnology Olympiad

The first International Nanotechnology Olympiad (INO) was hosted by the Iran Nanotechnology Initiative Council (INIC) in Pardis Technology Park, Tehran, from April 10–15. The theme of this inaugural INO centered on the application of nanotechnology to water treatment. The competition also featured educational modules, startup workshops, company visits, mixed team challenges, demo sessions, oral presentations, and student networking sessions to help participating teams develop their water-treatment solutions.

Four students from NTU and National Cheng Kung University (NCKU) teamed up to take part in the six-day competition. The team proposed an anti-fouling near-zero liquid discharge (N-ZLD) technology that combines biomimetic omniphobic inorganic membranes and a magnetic solar-driven photocatalytic system. In the final where nine teams from different countries competed with one another, this much-acclaimed solution won the Taiwan team the overall best project prize (3,000 euros), as well as the first place in all of the other three categories: “Innovation,” “Science and Technology,” and “Business Plan.”

The team was led by Academician Maw-Kuen Wu (吳茂昆), INO’s Steering Committee member and currently Taiwan’s Minister of Education, and jointly advised by NTU Prof. Kuo-Lun Tung (童國倫) and NCKU Prof. Wen-Che Hou (侯文哲). The four team members were Sheng-Bing Chen (陳聖兵) and Hung-Yuan Tsai (蔡鴻源) from the NTU Department of Chemical Engineering, and Hsiang-Chun Cheng (鄭翔駿) and Jian-Chong Luo (羅健中) from the NCKU Department of Environmental Engineering. The other supportive team members remaining in Taiwan were Kuan-Hsun Huang (黃冠勳), Jian-Hua Chen (陳建樺), Yi-Rui Chen (陳奕叡), and Sheng-Yi Lin (林聖益) from NTU as well as Yi-Shen Lin (林易伸) from NCKU.

The idea of organizing the INO was derived from the Asia Nanotechnology Forum in 2016, where the committee members, including Iran, Taiwan, Russia, South Korea, Malaysia, Kazakhstan, and Thailand, discussed Iran’s proposal of holding the INO. After much discussion and deliberation, the INO was officially established after the signing of an MOU by the following founding members: the INIC (Iran), the Institute of Physics at Academia Sinica (Taiwan), Korea Nano Technology Research Society (KoNTRS; Korea), Moscow State University (Russia), and RusNano (Russia).

The INO’s founding Steering Committee members were Dr. Ali Beitollahi, Director of the INIC International Workgroup; Academician Maw-Kuen Wu at Academia Sinica, currently Taiwan’s Minister of Education; Prof. Kyung-Ho Shin, Executive Vice President of KoNTRS; Prof. Eugene Goodilin at Moscow State University; and Dr. Andrey Melnikov, Senior Expert at RusNano. This biennial competition is scheduled to be hosted by Korea or Russia in 2020. The topic for the next INO may surround such issues as energy, environmental protection, hygiene, or other fields that have raised global concern.

Coverage by news media in Iran:
Press TV: https://youtu.be/vaXMappfEbc
Hispan TV: https://youtu.be/NxnXJD9eHXk
Tehran Times: http://www.tehrantimes.com/news/422721/Intl-Nanotechnology-Olympiad-an-opportunity-for-academic-synergy