Green Energy Research Group :
  
Driven by the controversial TaiPower’s 4th Nuclear Power Plant and the impact caused by global warming, the exploration and development of the energy policy in Taiwan should be directed toward several domains, including re-usable energy, distributive applications, and versatile resources, such that the sustainable power can be lasted forever. The source of new energy is aimed at several possibilities, including solar, wind, hydraulic, and bio-energy. All of these energy resources, besides the well-developed fire power by coal and oil and nuclear energy, are deemed as “clean”, or “green”, energy. Since Taiwan is located in the sub-tropical area, the sun keeps shining all year long which makes the solar energy very abundant. Besides, thank to the well-developed semiconductor and power electronics industry, the required solar cell technologies, including material, inverter, converter, battery, etc., are almost ready in Taiwan. Solar energy might be the most critical resource for Taiwan in the booming “green energy” technologies.

Department/Institute to join this research group :
Institute of Environmental Engineering
Dept. of Materials Science and Engineering
Dept. of Mechanical and Electro-Mechanical Engineering
Dept. of Electrical Engineering

  Quality Life Research Group :
  Many developed countries around the world have been turning their attentions to the issues for the coming aged society, including environment, smart house, wireless M-health, etc. The ultimate goal for quality-life technologies is to build a healthy and comfortable living space to make people enjoy the living and elevate the efficiency of working. ETPRC is in a mission to assemble a task team focusing on the migration of sensing technologies into a living space so as to modernize the space. Thanks to the fusion of a variety of sensing technologies, including acoustic, EM waves, temperature, bio-electronics, etc., and other booming technologies, such as smart MEMS, robots, RFID and ubiquitous computing facilities, a smart living space for all human being is foreseeable.

Department/Institute to join this research group :
Department of Electrical Engineering
Department of Computer Science and Engineering
Institute of Communications Engineering
Institute of Electro-Optical Engineering
Dept. of Materials Science and Engineering
Dept. of Mechanical and Electro-Mechanical Engineering

  Catastrophe Prevention Research Group : 
  Taiwan is located in the sub-tropical area where a rainy season appears between May and June, and typhoons visit all the time during June to Oct. Therefore, heavy rains pound this island almost half of an entire year. What worse is that the altitude of the landscape on this island changes abruptly to cause severe floods, mudflows, and landslides, washing away houses, farms, and even lives. Besides the flood problem, Taiwan is also located right between Eurasia continent and Philippine plate where is the one of the most active earthquake areas in the world. Hence, ETRPC tends to develop technologies to predict the threatening typhoons and earthquakes and help people to dodge possible disasters and prevent any loss of properties and lives by integrating all kinds of expertise in the College of Engineering. Possible research areas would be, but not limited to, the follows : data mining to analyze and predict areas where might be it by storms and quakes, wide-range wireless sensor networks to establishing early warning systems, damage emulation and simulation by hazard analysis and estimation, water body and quality monitoring mechanism, etc.

Department/Institute to join this research group :
Institute of Environmental Engineering
Department of Computer Science and Engineering
Institute of Communications Engineering
Dept. of Materials Science and Engineering
Dept. of Mechanical and Electro-Mechanical Engineering

  Flexible Electronics Research Group
  Customization, mobilization and personalization have always been the trend of recent electronic products. Such a strong demand has introduced the flexible electronics to the market. The advantages of flexible electronics are very much well recognized, including easy maintenance, high portability, quality touch screen, low power, and high flexibility. Thanks to the fast development of high polymer and organic material, the flexible electronics can be implemented and realized by mass production and low cost. The transistors are expected to be directly grown on either plastic or other polymer materials shortly, not limited to hard silicon. Therefore, currently commercial 3C products will be totally changed. For instance, a flexible screen to show the contents of a book or newspapers, RFID on a plastic bag, flexible solar cells, flexible sensors, flexible LED/light source, etc. In addition to enhance what the current electronic products has got, the flexible electronics technology will definitely create unthinkable possibility of applications in the areas of display, energy, communications, health, etc. The ubiquitous technology and computing, thus, will become in real.

Department/Institute to join this research group :
Department of Computer Science and Engineering
Institute of Communications Engineering
Dept. of Materials Science and Engineering,
Institute of Electro-Optical Engineering
Department of Electrical Engineering