Associate Prof. Hsin Jay Wu
The Taiwan Outstanding Women in Science award aims to encourage women to participate in scientific research; the awards ceremony was held on March 20, 2021. Associate Professor Hsin-Jay Wu from the Department of Materials Science and Engineering has been engaged in research on high-efficiency thermoelectric materials for more than 10 years. Her research findings have been applied to refrigerators, wine coolers, steelmaking furnaces, and NASA space probes and have considerable potential to facilitate the development of green energy. Therefore, she was awarded as a young scientist of excellence under this prestigious award.
Associate Professor Wu obtained a position in the Department of Materials and Optoelectronic Science at National Sun Yat-sen University after obtaining a Ph.D. in chemistry from National Tsing Hua University in 2012. Since 2019, she has been working in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at our university. During her decade-long career as a researcher, she presented numerous outstanding research results. In 2010, she won the Acta Student Award, making her the only Taiwanese honoree. In 2015, she was awarded the Young Leader Professional Development Award granted by The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society (TMS) in the United States. In 2018, she was granted the Young Scholar Fellowship by the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) and was awarded the Outstanding Young Scholar Award by the Materials Research Society Taiwan. In 2019, she served as a junior chair professor at National Chiao Tung University.
Associate Professor Wu specializes in the development and application of green energy. Starting from basic thermodynamics, she has explored applied thermoelectric materials (including systematic synthesis and measurement of thermoelectric materials) and the relationship between microstructure, phase balance, and thermoelectric properties. Her research is unique in the field of thermoelectric materials and has yielded fruitful and outstanding results. She has published more than 40 studies in Science Citation Index journals, including top journals such as Advanced Materials, Advanced Functional Materials, and Acta Materials.
Associate Professor Wu is active in the academic community. She organized a thermoelectricity-related agenda for the US TMS annual meeting where she also served as a primary organizer, session chair, and invited speaker. In addition, she organized the Materials Knowledge Contest for the Materials Research Society Taiwan and served as a guest editor for an international journal. She has presented a distinguished performance in teaching and research, and because of her dedication to science and talent cultivation, she obtained the MOST Grant for the Einstein Program as well as subsidies for the MOST 2030 cross-generation emerging young scholars.
Not limited by the traditional notion that “women do not need to read and study a lot,” Associate Professor Wu has resolutely immersed herself in scientific research and indicated that scientific research taught her how to become optimistic, “The key point is change of viewpoints; a half cup of water can be considered a half-filled cup or a half-empty cup; science is a method for training people how to change their attitude.” She encourages female students who are interested in science not to give up. She said, “Women are good at multitasking and can manage various events at the same time; they are therefore suitable for doing scientific research.”
