The Ministry of Science and Technology on Tuesday announced a new program — Leaders in Future Trends (LIFT) — to attract overseas Taiwanese technology talent to return home.
When Minister of Science and Technology Chen Liang-gee (陳良基) took the helm at the ministry in February, he launched a program to send doctorate graduates specializing in technology-related fields to Silicon Valley in California for short-term training at high-tech corporations or start-ups.
The new program, which is to be officially launched next month, is to give 100 Republic of China passport holders under 45 years old with a doctorate from an overseas university a chance to return to Taiwan on a professional exchange that comes with a government grant of NT$1.5 million (US$49,000) for up to one year.
Photo: Wu Po-wei, Taipei Times
“A large proportion of these people want to return to Taiwan,” Chen said, citing a survey of overseas professionals showing that approximately 60 percent would like to work in their home nation, but some worry about uncertainties in the work environment.
Many industries in Taiwan need such people, especially innovative technology professionals, Chen said. The program can serve as a “talent train” to bring them back.
The program would help arrange accommodation in the three major science-based industrial parks, provide participants with an allowance of NT$125,000 per month for up to a year and offer bilingual elementary or high-school education for their children, he said.
Participants would be required to attend at least 10 professional exchange events, including consultations, lectures, forums, innovative business model consultations, advanced technology advisory consultations, and other activities at corporations or research institutes.
Chen said the allowance is so that participants would not have to worry too much about living needs and accommodation, allowing them to focus on sharing their professional experiences in academia and research.
The funding would stop once the participant finds work, he said.
According to the survey, 22 of 40 companies polled have a need for overseas technology talent and among them have listed at least 379 job openings.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching