On Tuesday, April 18, Minister without Portfolio and National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) Minister Tsung-Tsong Wu met with State Minister of Science Sebastian Gemkow and a delegation from the Saxon State Ministry for Science, Culture and Tourism (SMWK). The 10-person delegation includes TU Dresden Rector Ursula M. Staudinger, TU Dresden Dean Karlheinz Bock, former BMBF officials Dr. Herbert Zeisel and Dr. Wolf-Dieter Lukas, and special advisors from the Fraunhofer Institute for Photonic Microsystems. This esteemed group is the first German scientific research delegation to visit Taiwan after the NSTC and the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) signed the Ger-many-Taiwan Scientific and Technological Cooperation Arrangement (STA) on March 21.

Minister Wu stated that Taiwan and Germany both place a high value on free-dom, democracy, and human rights. Thanks to these common ideals, Taiwan is highly interested in expanding cooperation with Germany. In particular, the Ar-rangement with BMBF will facilitate personnel exchanges, joint research, and mi-cro-electronics and semiconductor talent cultivation between the two institutions.
Minister Wu also assured the German delegation that Taiwan’s S&T communi-ty will continue to welcome further cooperation and industrial exchanges well into the future, in particular to strengthen partnerships with Dresden, which is located in Saxony and widely recognized as the S&T capital of Germany. 

State Minister Sebastian Gemkow responded by saying Taiwan has a leading position in the development of technology and fields related to semiconductors. He also said that Germany hopes to cooperate with Taiwan in semiconductor tal-ent cultivation. Furthermore, State Minister Gemkow expressed that he looks for-ward to strengthening bilateral cooperation on important scientific research.

The delegation later had a roundtable discussion with the National Applied Research Laboratories (NARLabs), in which State Minister Gemkow and NARLabs President Faa-Jeng Lin signed an arrangement to establish bilateral scientific re-search and technological cooperation. 

During this trip, the German delegation will also visit the Ministry of Education and the Hsinchu Science Park Bureau to promote relevant bilateral cooperation. In addition, TU Dresden will also sign academic cooperation MOUs with National Taiwan University, National Tsing Hua University, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University, and National Taiwan University of Science and Technology. These MOUs will promote bilateral academic visits, talent cultivation for young scientists, and double degree programs.  

Media Contact:
Kai-Shih Wang 
Section Chief 
Department of International Cooperation and Science Education
National Science and Technology Council
Tel: +886-2-27377810
kswang @nstc.gov.tw