This year, NCKU graduate students Yun-Ning Qiu and Shubhayan Mukherjee, the latter being an international student from India, respectively won first place in the "Light Metal Division (LMD)" and "Extraction & Processing Division (EPD)" at the TMS annual meeting. Yun-Ning Qiu's consecutive victories for two years make her the first student from Taiwan to achieve this feat, while Shubhayan Mukherjee became the first international student from Taiwan to win in this competition.
The 2024 TMS Annual Meeting poster paper competition featured five major areas: extraction processes, functional materials, light metals, materials manufacturing, and structural materials. With over 80 poster papers from renowned universities worldwide, participants hailed from countries such as the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, India, China, Australia, South Korea, Japan, Israel, and prestigious institutions including the University of California, Berkeley, Imperial College London, Northwestern University, Georgia Institute of Technology, Ohio State University, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich, University of Texas at Austin, and Korea University. It's remarkable that both first prizes in the five major competition areas were won by two participants from the same school and laboratory.
Professor Shih-Kang Lin's laboratory at NCKU has been making waves since 2014 when the first Taiwanese student won an award at the TMS Annual Meeting. Professor Lin himself participated in the competition during his student years in 2006 and 2007 and has been guiding students in this competition for many years. He expressed that winning two awards from the same school was already difficult in the past, let alone both awards going to students from the same laboratory team. He emphasized that these achievements not only affirm the students' individual research capabilities but also recognize the overall academic atmosphere and research quality at NCKU. He believes that with the accumulation of such achievements, NCKU's influence in the field of materials science and engineering will further expand, laying a solid foundation for future academic research and international cooperation.
The consecutive successes of the laboratory team in 2023 and 2024 underscore the core values and development direction of talent cultivation in the field of materials science at NCKU. Professor Lin highlighted that Yun-Ning Qiu's research results are part of a collaborative project between NCKU and China Steel Corporation, focusing on the development of high-strength aluminum alloys for aerospace and electric vehicles using advanced computational materials methods. This research is attracting international attention from the industry and academia, contributing to advancements in space technology and electric vehicle development. Shubhayan Mukherjee, hailing from rural East India, came to Taiwan to pursue his doctoral studies after a brief respite in global pandemics. As the first international student from Taiwan to win at the TMS Annual Meeting, his accolade not only demonstrates NCKU's commitment to internationalization, globalization, and openness but also showcases NCKU's outstanding contributions to talent cultivation in the global field of materials science.
The 153rd TMS Annual Meeting in 2024 lasted for five days, from March 3rd to 7th, in Orlando, Florida, USA. The conference featured over 95 technical symposia, attracting nearly 5000 attendees. The TMS Annual Meeting is a grand event in the global field of materials science, organized by The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society (TMS), founded in 1871. TMS is the oldest and largest professional materials engineering society globally.
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Professor Shih-Kang Lin from the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at NCKU (left 1) coached doctoral students Yu-Ning Chiu (left 2) and Shubhayan Mukherjee (left 3) who participated in the poster paper competition at the 2024 Minerals, Metals & Materials Society (TMS) Annual Meeting in the United States, once again breaking Taiwan's student award record.
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Students and faculty from the Materials Science and Engineering Department at NCKU clinched two top awards in five major competition areas at the 2024 TMS Annual Meeting poster paper contest, marking Taiwan's best performance in over a decade. In the "light metals" category, NCKU Materials Science and Engineering doctoral student Yu-Ning Chiu (right) not only continued her outstanding performance from 2023 but also became the first Taiwanese student to clinch back-to-back championships in the history of the TMS Annual Meeting poster paper competition.
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Shubhayan Mukherjee, a doctoral student from the Materials Science and Engineering Department at NCKU hailing from India (right), secured the first place in the "extraction processes" category at the 2024 TMS Annual Meeting poster paper contest, becoming the first international student in Taiwan to win an award at the TMS Annual Meeting poster paper competition.
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At the 2024 TMS Annual Meeting poster paper contest, two students from the same lab at NCKU won both first prizes in the five major competition areas, a remarkable achievement among over 80 presentations from top institutions worldwide. *Image from the 2024 TMS website, showing the winners. In the red-framed area, the person on the left is Yu-Ning Chiu, and on the right is Shubhayan Mukherjee, both doctoral students from the university's Materials Science and Engineering Department, with Mukherjee hailing from India.