Text provided by the three award recipients and Ching-Tzu Meng
Photos provided by the three award recipients

The National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) recently announced the recipients of the 2026 Ta-You Wu Memorial Award, with three outstanding young scholars from National Cheng Kung University (NCKU) receiving the honor: Associate Professor Jian-Ren Hou of the Department of Industrial and Information Management and Institute of Information Management, Associate Professor Wei-Hsuan Hsu of the Institute of Food Safety, Hygiene and Risk Management, and Associate Professor Sheng-Sheng Yu of the Department of Chemical Engineering. Their achievement fully demonstrates NCKU’s solid research capacity and is a source of pride for the entire university community.

The Ta-You Wu Memorial Award was established by the NSTC to cultivate young researchers by supporting and encouraging their long-term commitment to academic research and continued pursuit of academic excellence, while commemorating Dr. Ta-You Wu’s contributions to the advancement of scientific and technological research. Each year, the NSTC selects recipients from among that year’s principal investigators of research projects who are aged 42 or younger and hold the position of associate professor, associate research fellow, or an equivalent or lower rank. For female candidates who have given birth before reaching the age limit, the eligibility age is extended by two years for each child. In principle, 45 recipients are selected each year.

Academic research profiles of the three NCKU award recipients:

 
Prof. Jian-Ren Hou
 

Associate Professor Jian-Ren Hou of the Department of Industrial and Information Management and the Institute of Information Management holds a Ph.D. in Information Systems from the University of Texas at Arlington. His research expertise spans online user behavior, e-commerce, artificial intelligence applications, and data science. Drawing primarily on interdisciplinary perspectives from technology and psychology, his research explores how users interact and make decisions on emerging digital platforms and social media.

In recent years, Prof. Hou has broadly applied his expertise to several important issues in digital society and business, including exploring how platform mechanism design and fact-checking can help combat the spread of misinformation and fake news, analyzing consumer adoption of fintech and robo-advisory services, and using AI-based image analysis to investigate the relationship between visual emotions in crowdfunding projects and fundraising performance. Overall, his research integrates data science methods with behavioral theories to provide academically valuable and practically relevant insights into contemporary e-commerce environments and issues in digital society.

  
Prof. Wei-Hsuan Hsu

Associate Professor Wei-Hsuan Hsu of the Institute of Food Safety, Hygiene and Risk Management holds a Ph.D. from the Department of Biochemical Science and Technology at National Taiwan University. Her research expertise includes food microbiology, food fermentation and biotechnology, probiotic development, next-generation probiotics, novel food processing, functional foods, gut health, gut microbiota, and extracellular vesicles.

Prof. Hsu’s research aligns with emerging perspectives in precision medicine, focusing on gut microbiota and extracellular vesicles. She is dedicated to developing next-generation probiotics and functional microbial extracellular vesicles, and exploring their applications in gut health and food-derived functional nanostructures. Her research seeks to understand how dietary components and environmental factors influence the gut microbial ecosystem and host health through extracellular vesicle-mediated signaling. Using extracellular vesicles as a platform for interspecies communication, she investigates interactions among microorganisms, host cells, and environmental exposure factors.

Related research includes the regulatory effects of probiotics and food-derived extracellular vesicles on the gut microbiota and intestinal environment, as well as how emerging environmental pollutants such as microplastics disrupt the gut microenvironment and host health through extracellular vesicle-related pathways. Her work opens new avenues for research into the role of microbial extracellular vesicles in cross-kingdom interactions, and contributes to developing precision health strategies with both academic innovation and potential for industrial applications.

Prof. Sheng-Sheng Yu 

Associate Professor Sheng-Sheng Yu of the Department of Chemical Engineering holds a Ph.D. from the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology and previously served as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Berkeley. His research expertise includes polymer reaction engineering, green chemistry, biopolymer materials, and additive manufacturing engineering.

Prof. Yu’s research focuses on the applications of deep eutectic solvents in polymer synthesis and 3D printing. For example, he has applied the concept of deep eutectic solvents to accelerate photoinduced reversible addition-fragmentation chain-transfer polymerization and atom transfer radical polymerization. He has also developed self-healing, highly tough ionogel materials and combined them with 3D printing to fabricate multifunctional wearable sensors and soft robotic arms. His research findings have been published in internationally renowned journals, including Advanced Functional Materials, Biomacromolecules, ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces, Macromolecules, and Chemical Communications. His recent work employed a visible-light-initiated strategy to synthesize poly(methyl methacrylate) with a molecular weight in the millions and a narrow molecular weight distribution. The work was selected for the cover of Macromolecules, a flagship journal in the field of polymer science.

The three young scholars’ receipt of the Ta-You Wu Memorial Award is not only a personal honor, but also a source of pride for NCKU. Their recognition serves as an inspiration to the many young scholars who have been working diligently and quietly in scientific research. NCKU encourages its faculty and students to make full use of academic resources, continue pursuing in-depth academic and scientific research, explore new possibilities, and contribute to a better society.