2025 Southern Taiwan Science Park Industry-Academia Association Member General Meeting : AI Collaboration Across Sectors

The 12th Member General Meeting of the Southern Taiwan Science Park（STSP） Industry-Academia Association (hereafter “the Association”) and the GLORIA SOUTH AI R&D Highlights & Technical Talent Exchange Conference, together with the AI Highlights Technology Forum, were held today (25th) at the Macronix Building on the Sheng-Li Campus of National Cheng Kung University. Colleges and universities, enterprises, and legal entities around GLORIA SOUTH gathered under the industry-academia training cooperation platform constructed by the Association to exchange ideas. On site were demonstrations of member schools’ AI-centric R&D achievements, alongside cross-school technical matchmaking, keynote speeches, and industry forums, showcasing NCKU’s strong capacity to centralize resources as a leading institution.

The Association’s 12th second member general meeting began in the morning. Association Chairman and NCKU President Meng-Ru Shen delivered remarks, starting from the challenges higher education faces under low birth rates, and extending to the shared impact across all industries brought by artificial intelligence. “Only by turning AI into an ever-present good partner can we make full use of this tool,” said President Shen. He expressed that during his tenure as Association Chairman, he intends to leverage the Association’s platform to offer members advanced AI technologies, educational lectures, both theory and practice resources. Seizing this opportunity where industry, government, academia, and research are together, he specially invited NCKU’s Vice President for International Affairs Sun-Yuan Hsieh to share AI applications and practices in industry, and arranged on-site displays of R&D outcomes from theory to implementation. He sincerely welcomes industry, government, academia, and research to exchange through the Association’s platform.

Former Deputy Chair of the National Science Council Chein Tai, who was the first Director of the STSP Management Bureau and a key promoter in the founding period of the Association, remarked that in STSP’s early days, comparing to the Hsinchu Science Park with Tsing Hua, Chiao Tung, ITRI, and 10 NSC centers, STSP looked like nothing but sugarcane fields, with only NCKU 17 kilometers away. It was precisely for this reason that at the founding of the Association, consensus formed that the Association could not operate without NCKU’s assistance and support. With STSP entering its 30th year next year, he stated that the Association as a platform has always played a crucial role in talent cultivation and industry-academia cooperation, giving key support to the park. He sincerely thanked members’ long-term support and hope the Association will continue to assist STSP’s development in the future.

In the afternoon’s “AI Highlights Technology Forum,” Xiu-Zhen Lin, Deputy Director of the STSP Management Bureau, attended on behalf of Director Xiu-Rong Zheng and wished the event every success. In her opening remarks, she noted that in the first half of 2025, STSP’s revenue reached NT$1.38 trillion, marking a 49% leap from the same period last year, and the business scale continues to expand. With growth in output, the park’s demand for senior talent is also rising. She emphasized that since 2001 the STSP Bureau and the Association have closely cooperated in promoting talent training and industry-academia collaboration programs, and through technical and talent exchange activities help align research outcomes and talent between park enterprises and universities. She looks forward to research teams actively showcasing and sharing their results. Deputy Director Lin mentioned that the Bureau also provides R&D subsidies; research teams can propose emerging technology application plans through park enterprises, and she welcomes all parties to seize the opportunity of resources within the park, jointly promoting technological innovation and industrial upgrading to build a more internationally competitive STSP industrial ecosystem.

The “AI Highlights Project Exhibition & Technical Talent Exchange Conference,” co-organized by NCKU together with 18 Association member schools, displayed nearly 50 highlighted R&D achievements, focusing on frontier themes such as AI in smart manufacturing, intelligent sensing & anomaly detection, AI-driven medical imaging analysis, AI cloud management platforms, and generative AI automated management systems. On site, university and enterprise experts delivered talks centered on AI applications. Associate Professor Yi-Shan Tsai from the Department of Medical Imaging at NCKU Hospital spoke on “Cross-domain Innovation and Opportunities: Turning Medical Data into Gold,” discussing the future development of smart healthcare, and sharing the latest applications and challenges of AI in digital medicine. Simultaneously, a cross-school AI innovation technical matchmaking session was held, gathering top AI teams from multiple schools and member enterprises, launching 40 one-on-one matchmaking sessions and group deep dialogues to help enterprises precisely connect with cutting-edge AI technology resources, jointly developing AI solutions deployable in real industrial settings.

The Association serves as a key platform for collaboration among industry, government, academia, and research in the STSP. It not only provides services in technology exchange, talent cultivation, and industry-academia matchmaking, but also actively promotes inter-university and cross-disciplinary cooperation to foster innovation and the industrialization of scientific research achievements. As in previous years, this annual general meeting has once again become a grand event for the smart technology industry in Southern Taiwan. It brought together experts, leaders, and emerging teams from industry, government, academia, and research, jointly demonstrating the boundless potential of AI innovation and applications across the GLORIA SOUTH.