Tainan, Taiwan - This April 29th National Cheng Kung University (NCKU) President Huey-Jen Jenny Su met with Netherlands Trade & Investment Office (NTIO) Representative Guy Wittich. NCKU already has a warm connection with the Netherlands and both parties happily discussed how to deepen out more collaboration in various fields.
Only nine months ago, Guy Wittich was installed as highest representative of the Netherlands in Taiwan, but he’s already successful in bonding Taiwan’s’ relations with the Netherlands even better. Three of his focus topics are innovation of Circular Economy, Energy and Water. Jenny Su acknowledges the importance of these topics and finds NCKU and Tainan very suitable to research and develop more on this topic. Both sides agreed that collaboration with Dutch universities and companies in these fields will have benefits for both. This collaboration would also involve collaboration between universities, cities and companies; a so called ‘triple helix strategy’.
Present at this meeting where Prof. Hsiao-Wen Wang (NCKU head of international affairs/department of Hydraulic & Ocean Engineering), Bart van Bueren (NCKU director of Dutch Design Post) and Rodney Matsuoka (NCKU Research center for Energy Technology and Strategy). The three people are currently already collaborating with the Netherlands in fields of Academic collaboration, Water, Energy and Creative Industries. This meeting already led to combine the NTIO innovation Roadshow and the yearly NCKU ISETS conference on Energy in October. Other new collaborations may be found in Circular Economy, Social Design and the shared history between Tainan and the Netherlands from 400 years ago.
After the meeting with NCKU’s president, the NTIO delegation of Guy Wittich, Diederik van der Toorn and Jody Chen made a brief visit to the Dutch Design Post. This is an international triple helix collaboration between NCKU, NTIO and Tainan city, which is operating already for two years.
SOURCE / National Cheng Kung University
