Taipei Medical University’s Report on the Results and Highlights of Higher Education Sprout Project for the 2019
【Teaching】
I.Teaching innovation
1. Cultivated in-depth medical and humanistic education, and structured educational map of medical ethics
i. Invigorate humanistic and artistic education: added 16 events of stationed Taiwan Campus Film Festivals, and Masters’ Film Festivals in 2019; published medical humanistic education book series: Six Humanistic Lessons for Doctors to Be, Meeting My Life Mentor on the Road of Humanism, etc.
ii. Expanded Maple Woods Literary Competition: expanded contest categories to include poetry, essay, photography, and medical novels with 63 contestants’ submissions, which is a 43% growth compared with the number in 2018. The submitted works consisted of topics related to life, medical scenes, and social medicine and exhibited the unique artistic features of our university. The work “A Letter of Complaint” by a medical student in our school won the first prize in the novel category of the “2019 Super New Star Youth Literary Competition” by the Ministry of Culture.
iii. Opened courses with Academia Sinica and the National Palace Museum:
(1) Opened 12 courses of humanistic lectures with Academia Sinica, and held “Results Presentation for Academia Sinica’s Humanistic Lectures” on campus in 2019, displaying the students’ learning outcomes in 2018 to 2019.
(2) Opened the course “Taipei Medical University (TMU) Students to the National Palace Museum: a Practicum of Arts” and “Mobile Museum: a Practical Course on Curation and Guided Tour”, and employed digital technology in holding the “National Palace Museum Pop Up Exhibition: Digital Miniature Special Exhibition”.
iv. Finalized the medical ethics educational mapping: align general education and departmental ethics courses with the four aspects: common ethics, professional ethics, legal education, and communication and situations to plan the university’s ethical courses mapping. In 2019, the undergraduate School of Medicine, School of Dentistry, School of Dental Technology, School of Oral Hygiene, School of Pharmacy (Pharmacy Department and Clinical Department), and School of Nursing have developed their medical ethics courses mapping.
2. Perfected medical simulation education, practical training and clinical education
i. Enhanced diversified teaching courses: introduced innovative technology-assisted teaching, such as anatomical ultrasound in anatomy courses and VR Clinic courses, to reduce students’ insecurity for future clinical work and enhance their clinical skills.
ii. Kept pace with international simulation education: hosted “2019 Conference for Education in Medical and Simulation” under the topic of “Teach Tech Tomorrow.” The event was open to medical and health professionals around the island and the world with an attendance of 366 people from 11 countries.
3. Constructed cross-disciplinary learning and innovative entrepreneurship eco-environment
i. Provided cross-disciplinary mini-program courses and optimized overall curriculum: formulated an organizational quality assurance mechanism for the mini-program and ensure curriculum quality. 29 courses were offered Fall semester in the school year 108 with 1,861 enrolled participants.
ii. Refined teaching quality and organized teacher empowerment workshops: provided on-line and off-line teachers’ workshops for keeping track of the development and changes in cross-disciplinary teaching through actual examples and assisting teachers in sharing teaching tools used in classes.
iii. Provided space for startup teams stations, shared information on fundraising competitions, and helped the teams join the contests: provided self-regulated learning space for students, including Somatosensory Technology Lab, New Media Lab, and communication and expression training zone for their project discussions. The startup team spaces are open for application with an aim to assist the teams in stationing and consulting on smoothly completing the contests. Up until now there has been 37 teams stationing and being consulted over 310 times.
iv. Opened digital self-learning courses and provided diverse learning methods: established digital self-learning reward funding mechanism to boost students’ motivation to learn and cultivate their digital learning and self-regulated learning capabilities, in order to achieve the purpose of life-long learning. Also, digital self-learning course selection map was developed to guide the students in selecting courses in accordance with their aptitude.
v. Excellent performance in innovative entrepreneurship programs and contests: accredited by the Ministry of Education’s Training Program for Interdisciplinary Talents of Biomedicine and New Agriculture, Innovation and Entrepreneurship Program, and Youth Development Administration’s U-start Plan for Innovation and Entrepreneurship. Won golden and silver plate and excellent work awards for biomedical technology group A in the “2017 Biotechnology Innovation and Entrepreneurship Award” by the Ministry of Education (MOE) and silver plate for biomedicine industry group B in the “2018 Biotechnology Innovation and Entrepreneurship Award”, and silver and bronze plates for biomedicine group in the “2019 Biomedicine and New Agriculture Innovation and Entrepreneurship Contest” by the MOE, the first prize in “The First Young HPV Fighters Creative Competition” and the second place in “Wei Chuan Students’ New Flavor Development Contest”.
4. Promoted computational thinking education, with 65% undergraduates equipped with knowledge of programming
i. Basic design and A.I. listed in required courses: the series of programming courses had up to 1,247 accumulated number of takers, 268 for advanced programing courses, and up until 2019 there had been 67.3% students taking programming courses.
ii. Offered local and foreign digital programming courses to students: up until 2019, there had been a total of 14 IT courses from reputed local and foreign universities for students to take digitally in the mode of self-learning; the participants reached 173 people/times.
iii. Organized competitions to provide a stage for students and activated the drive to learn: the annual programming competition was expanded in 2019 to include other universities; a total of 80 students from 34 teams of 4 universities took part. The champion team skillfully used natural language processing technology that enabled AI to creative modern poems; the second place team successfully combined AI and medical ultra-sound image identification system to assist the doctor in telemedicine.
II. Publicity for higher education
1. Improved aids for education for disadvantageous students, and lowered the benchmark for priority list of personal application for financially challenged students
i. On learning – established a learning care mechanism for financially challenged students: through mechanisms such as mentor or teacher-student interaction sessions, peers or teaching assistants, and self-regulated learning platform to provide learning consultation and activated learning alerts to timely follow students’ learning conditions, and help them adjust study strategies. Referred students to counseling as deemed necessary when encountering a predicament. Individual learning counseling and life care aims to optimize their multiple learning power.
ii. On life – provided sustained mechanism for helping the weak: invited large corporations to donate funds for financial aid projects to economically or culturally disadvantaged students, or encouraged alumni to adopt students with small fund for long term through Mu Shan New Buds Empowerment Award to help support their basic daily needs, and provided meal and boarding expenses, and other tuition aides to alleviate students’ burden of living.
iii. On the future – provided resources and subsidizing measures: encouraged students to join various clubs with an aim to help them strike a balance between cultivating professional abilities and marketplace soft skills in the school years. Personal career exploration and career consultation activities were also provided to strengthen their competitiveness for employment, store up high quality energy, and succeed in transforming their socio-economic status.
2. Applied school affairs research in enhancing teaching, learning and school administration outcomes
i. Implemented empirical orientation approach in school affairs analysis: 2019 pioneered in hosting a campus-wide “Outcome of Research Issues for School Affairs Competition” with 15 teams, 69 participants involved. The topics included student-oriented: an investigation of graduates’ self-evaluation on factors concerning employability; teaching-oriented: a learning analysis on flip education of MOOCs; research-oriented: an analysis of the research energy of featured research center; and international-oriented: the impact international co-authorship has on thesis citation index, etc., to upgrade research capacity on school affairs by competition and shape the campus culture of researching school affairs.
ii. Visualized information of school affairs and check implementation effectiveness with numbers: for the purpose of school affairs transparency, instant search, and presentation of research outcomes, the school established an interactive, visual analysis platform. Up until 2019, a total of 102 data sheets had been compiled regarding teaching, research, international, graduate, etc., and 1,259 columns; and completed 16 indexes and setting up of 10 main modules.
III. Social responsibility
1. Sent volunteers to remote villages locally and overseas, and was granted Excellence Award, Furnace Fire and Pure Gold Award, and Silver Applause Award in the International Competition of Youth Overseas Peace Work in 2019.
i. Students formed teams to carry out social responsibilities: every year, during summer and winter vacations, around 25-30 groups are organized by the students to serve in mountainous areas in Taiwan, outlying islands and remote villages. In 2018, a total of 30 teams and 1,313 people were sent to 30 towns and villages including Datong Village in Yilan County, Jianshih Township in Shinchu County, Renai Township in Nantou County, Changbin Township in Taitung County, Beigan Township in Lienchiang County and Huxi Township in Penghu County.
ii. Raised service quality of the permanent service team in the Kingdom of Eswatini: the first medical service assignment of the volunteer team formed by teachers and students to the Kingdom of Eswatini, African. They introduced improved rocket stoves made by concrete bricks, community teaching tour, dental diagnosis and treatment, children’s health education and parasite research project, etc., to instill health knowledge into the local people.
iii. Praxis and glory: the performance of Taipei Medical University has been highly recognized by the society. The accredited records include: Maple and Apricot Social Medical Service Team’s yearly visitation to Peng Hu County won the first place of “Outstanding Team of Youth Volunteers” for 8 consecutive years, and won an award in the Youth Development Administration’s Youth Overseas Peace Work Contest by the MOE for 3 consecutive years; Maple and Apricot Medical Service Team to the Kingdom of Eswatini was granted 2017, 2018 Golden Quality Awards and 2019 Excellence Award; TMU FLYoung International Service Team to Cambodia was granted 2017, 2018 Silver Quality Awards and 2019 Golden Quality Award; TMU FLYoung International Service Team to Cambodia to the Kingdom of Eswatini was granted 2018 Silver Quality Award; the overseas medical service team to Nepal was granted 2017 Bronze Quality Award and 2019 Silver Quality Award.
2. Promoted University’s social responsibility and expanded social impact
i. Assistive technology brightens the life of the handicapped: based on the spirit of service and care of assistive technology and targeting industrial development and talent cultivation, to arrive at “enhanced health care quality by assistive technology” and “upgrading and promotion of assistive technology industry”, TMU’s College of Medicine, College of Biomedical Engineering, College of Nursing, and College of Management were integrated and the teaching resources were broadened to the Excellent Long-Established University Consortium of Taiwan (ELEUCT) and University System of Taipei(USTP).
ii. Built an elder-friendly community network of cross-region gathering and empowering: integrated the resources of TMU and its three affiliated hospitals on the basis of one university and three hospitals and local communities, including Xinyi, Daan, Wenshan, and Zhongzheng Districts in Taipei City and Zhonghe District in New Taipei County as the praxis arena, by taking inventory of community issues and combining SDGs goals of “health and wellness”, “education quality” and “reducing inequality”, continually introduced “promote social participation of elderly and make their dream come true”, “stone soup connects a new life for long-term care”, “communal safety life and local empowerment”, and “old age nutrition and aging prevention” the four solutions into the communities.
【Research】
I. Developed specialized research and implemented translational medicine
1. Cancer translational medicine
i. Spin-off start-up companies: established Calgent Biotechnology Co., Ltd. In 2019, a startup based on the development of the small molecule medicine, MPT0L056.
ii. New medicine development: a new small molecule anti-cancer drug HDAC inhibitor MPT0E028 already passed the US FDA and Taiwan TFDA IND examination, and completed clinical test Phase I going on to Phase II. HDAC6 inhibitor, ITCH E3 ubiquitin ligase, a new anti-cancer drug completed drug optimization and initial formulation development. New anti-cancer drug, a small molecule HSP90 inhibitor was undergoing the GLP clinical test. Also, an antibody drug, antibody engineering platform, and Chinese herbal medicine application were granted patents.
iii. International cooperation: formed a cross-country research team on brain cancer and colorectal cancer with Case Western Reserve University, formed a cross-country research team on women’s cancer (breast cancer and ovarian cancer) with Johns Hopkins University, cooperated with the University of Southern California in treating and taking care of a cancer family, and collaborated with Mayo Clinic in researching drug resistance mechanism in colorectal cancer.
2. Neuromedicine
i. Patent technology transfer: obtained 3 patents, 9 in the application process; completed 3 technology transfer (developed new formulations of lutein to treat dry eye and apply in eye care, preparation of photothermal nanoparticles, and a method and kit for applying to expansion of Circulating Tumor Cells (CTCs) in vitro).
ii. International cooperation: collaborated with Case Western Reserve University on a bilateral neuromedicine project, was granted the Ministry of Science and Technology’s funding to conduct an international cooperation project on brain injury with NIH, founded the neuromedicine and tissue engineering academic alliance with University of Lille (France), signed bilateral agreement on research, double degree, promotion of a mutual research fund, and founding of Lille-TMU Joint Lab in Neuromedicine, etc.
3. Thoracic medicine
i. Developed new drugs: MPT0E028, Pan-HDAC inhibitor, a compound used in treating or preventing fibrotic diseases, was granted a patent by TIPO, R.O.C., and in the application process in the US, Japan, China and Europe.
ii. Patent technology transfer: sleep medicine team and medical material team developed the COPD wearable device rooti 2.0, which is now in trial production and patent application process.
iii. International cooperation: founded the thoracic medicine academic alliance with Imperial College London, set up joint labs, began personnel training, held bilateral conferences, and conducted international academic research. cooperation, etc. Collaborated with University of Pennsylvania on sleep disorder-related research by using wearable devices to simulate fatigue driving background.
4. AI medicine
i. Created spin-off start-up companies: 2 companies were founded in 2019, including Aesop Technology, which launched MedGuard to solve the problem of medication error, and DermAI Co.,Ltd, developing out of the technology of smart skin image analysis platform.
ii. International cooperation: collaborated with University of Pennsylvania on clinical AI application in sleep and cognitive functions; conducted brain tumor AI research with University of California, Irvine, exchanging medical AI imaging technology; conducted clinical research Phase II of smart medication safety system with Harvard University’s affiliated Brigham and Women's Hospital.
II. Implemented cultivation of outstanding research talents:
1. Outstanding research performance won National Innovation Award: 10 professors won the award in 2019, including: Prof. Hung-Cheng Lai(again), Prof. Ray-Jade Chen, Prof. Yen-Hua Huang, Prof. Jing-Ping Liou, Prof. Gi-Ming Lai, Prof. Chih-Wei Pen, Prof. Yu-Chuan Li, Prof. How Tseng, Associate Prof. Kuo-Hsiang Chuang, and Assistant Prof. Lu, Long-Sheng.
2. Cultivated integrated project leader: drove teams to research on latest issues. Through adapting issues in small groups and matching academicians via PI workshop for consultation, competitive teams were built up. Increased number of consolidated integrated research projects by the Ministry of Science and Technology: 2 projects in the school year 106, 3 in the school year 107, and 6 in the school year 108.
3. Moved innovative translational research and developed talents for new research fields: through call-for-proposal mode of the “Translational Innovation Research Project” on campus to enhance young talents’ participation in the integrated research projects and form featured research team, with an aim to raise academic and clinical research energy. In 2018, 35 proposals were consolidated and granted a total funding amount of 59.8 million NT; in 2019, 53 proposals were consolidated and were granted a total funding amount of 70.3 million NT.
4. Talent cultivation came to fruition and expanded cross-generational research map: recruited and developed new research talents under the consultation of academician-level experts. In 2018-2019, 12 large-scale projects were consolidated by The Columbus Program and The Einstein Program by the Ministry of Science and Technology with an accumulated fund of about 130 million NT, the highest grant among the private universities in the country.
【International】
I. Established international learning environment and systematically fostered student’s global mobility
In order to increase exchange between local and foreign students, events like international salons, global week, international cultural festivals, and international food festival were held, attracting over 1,000 participants, which broadened students’ global vision and boost cross-cultural learning atmosphere. The percentage of students with international mobility experience went from 6.53% in the school year 106 to 9.67% in the school year 107, a substantial increase in the number of mid-/long-term overseas researchers and groups studying in foreign countries.
II. Combined featured research fields to recruit foreign teachers and chair professors
TMU attracted foreign academic talents to the school with competitive, flexible salary, decent benefit packages and advanced scientific research equipment. Currently there are 19 foreign teachers from 10 countries working on contract. Also, Prof. Colin Collins specializing in prostate cancer from University of British Columbia (UBC), Prof. Kian Fan Chung from the Imperial College London, Prof. Barry J. Hoffer from Case Western Reserve University, Prof. Pao-Tien Chuang from University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), and Prof. Tzyy-Choou Wu and Prof. Ie-Ming Shih from Johns Hopkins University are employed here. Prof. Che-Kun James Shen and Prof. Yung-Chi Cheng from Academia Sinica and numerous other distinguished scholars have been chair professors in TMU, forming a tight-knit international research cooperation network.
III. Developed international key alliance ties, exploited cooperation maps, and foster regional academic alliances
Encouraged all colleges to designate key ally universities based on their academic features. Currently substantial cooperative rapport had been formed with 10 universities in the US, Japan, Australia, Belgium, UK, France, etc. In 2019, 99 students were approved for the exchange program, 46 times of researchers’ bilateral visitations, 13 shift locus teachings, 7 co-supervising cases of graduate and doctoral students, two online courses (MOOCs), 10 joint research teams, commercialization of 3 joint research results, and the papers published through international cooperation in 2020 took up 34.8% of the total number of the university’s theses.
Moreover, 6 academic alliances had been formed according to TMU’s specialized research; the allies include: Johns Hopkins University, University of Southern California, Case Western Reserve University, Université de Lille, Imperial College London and Hokkaido University.
IV. Expanded recruitment of foreign doctoral students to further cultivation of advanced talents
Executed Taiwan Experience Education Program (TEEP) and was awarded 750,000NT for 5 cases by the MOE. 98 students studied or took internship in the school in 2019, a 392% growth in 2 years, which indicated recognition for the excellent result. 64 new foreign students enrolled in the doctoral program in school year 108, exceeding 50% of the total new comers of the program. Overall, 188 foreign students enrolled in the doctoral program, more than any other medical universities in Taiwan.
【Industry and Academia】
I. Integrated the industry, government, academia, research and medicine, cultivating Ph.D.s, doctors, and advanced talents in innovation and entrepreneurship:
(1) Granted by Research Service Company (RSC) project of the MOE, 5 teams were funded to target founding a company based on research results and cultivating and training students in the doctoral and post-doctoral programs. (2) Rebuild After PhDs'Industrial Skill and Expertise (RAISE) so far cultivated 7 doctoral level talents, among whom 5 are employed in the marketplace. (3) SPARK Program had cultivated 15 teams (86 people) in total, and most of the teams succeeded in phasing in commercialization of their research results.
II. Integrated international resources and fostered high-level personnel for innovation and entrepreneurship
Implemented TMU-Stanford University GFIT (Global Faculty Training Program) project to send attending physicians to Stanford for global faculty program for 5 months every year. 3 attending physicians were selected in 2019. Joined Stanford-Taiwan Biomedical Fellowships Program (STB) and 3 TMU attending physicians were awarded the grant.
III. Founded 4 spin-off start-ups
In the past 8 years, TMU created 16 spin-off start-up companies, and 4 were founded in 2019 with fruitful outcomes. Among the start-ups, Guzipbio and Calgent Biotechnology have had the most brilliant performance and was funded in the amount of over 38 million NT and 109 million NT, respectively.
IV. Cooperated with international accelerator in operations and perfected TMU accelerator
Raised TMU innovation entrepreneur seed sower funds and financed start-ups grew by TMU accelerator’s seed round investment. The fund raised hit 16 million NT. In 2019, TMU collaborated with MassChallenge, the biggest accelerator in the East US, and BE Accelerator in the “B2MC Project” for selecting projects in Taiwan; co-organized 2019 NBRP BioMed Start-up Challenge with the international pharmaceutical company, AstraZeneca, and selected 8 groups for training, among which 4 groups were TMU’s spin-off start-ups. The result was very brilliant.