Welcome to the Tian research group in the Department of Chemical Engineering at National Cheng Kung University (NCKU) in Tainan, Taiwan - The Tian group @NCKU

The Tian group @NCKU

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^NewsOpen positions(2024/12 updated)

We are currently looking for one Postdoctoral researcher (starting 2025/08). Some Ph.D. positions are also available. If you are interested, please email Prof. Tian (hktian@gs.ncku.edu.tw) with your CV.

Upcoming scheduled conferences and seminars

(Chair) 2025, 01/16-01/17, Advanced Green-Energy Materials Conference @NCKU, Tainan.
(Invited) 2025/03/07, seminar talk in the Department of Chemistry at National Taiwan University (台大化學系).
2025, 04/25-04/26, Symposium on Thermodynamics and Process Systems Engineering (熱力學暨程序系統工程研討會) @Sun Moon Lake(日月潭), Nantou.
(Invited) 2025, 05/09, 工業觸媒工作坊 @CPC, Kaohsiung
(Invited) 2025, 05/12-05/16, TW-DN Battery Project Annual Meeting (台德電池計畫雙邊會議) @Nantou
(Invited) 2025, 06/01-06/03, The 11th General Conference of the Asian Consortium on Computational Materials Science (ACCMS-11) @Yokohama, Japan
(Invited and chair) 2025, 06/18-06/20, Taiwan International Conference on Catalysis (TICC-2025, 台灣國際觸媒年會) @NTHU, Hsinchu.
(Invited) 2025, 07/25-07/26, Annual Meeting of Taiwan Nanomedicine Society (TNS2025, 台灣奈米生醫年會) @Taichung.
(Invited) 2025, 08/04-08/06, Sustainable Energy and Environment (SEE) Symposium @NCKU
2025, 10/12-10/16, ECS Fall Meeting @Chicago, USA

Publication News

^News 2024/12 – Congratulations to Feye-Feng Lu (陸飛鳳) on her 1st-author work and successful collaboration with Prof. Yoshitaka Tateyama @Science Tokyo, now published in the Journal of Power Sources (IF: 8.1). The publication, titled “Dual Influence of Protonation on Li-ion Transport in Garnet Solid Electrolytes: A First-Principles Study,” showcases their remarkable research achievements.
2024/11 – Congratulations to Ming-Yuan Hung (洪名遠) and Prof. Yu-Chuan Lin on their successful collaboration, now published in Chemical Communications (IF: 4.3). The paper, titled “Boosted Reverse Water-Gas Shift Activity via Exsolved Cu and Ni in Silicalite-1,“ highlights their outstanding work.
^News 2024/11 – Congratulations to Ming-Yuan Hung (洪名遠) on the successful collaboration with Prof. Hsisheng Teng, now published in Chemical Engineering Journal (IF: 13.3). The paper, titled “Gel electrolyte design for nonflammable lithium-ion batteries with high-rate and high-voltage characteristics,” highlights their outstanding work.
2024/11 – Congratulations to Zih-Lie Huang (黃子洌) on his 1st-author work and successful collaboration with Prof. Chuang-Feng Shih, now published in Materials Today Advances (IF: 8.1). The publication, titled “Comprehensive Study on Phase Stability of Lead-Free Sn-Based Perovskite FAxMA1-xSnI3,” highlights their exceptional research contributions.
2024/08 – Congratulations to Hong-Kai Chen (陳弘凱) on his 1st-author work, now published in Journal of Materials Chemistry A (IF: 10.7). The publication, titled “Interfacial insights for divergent dendrite formation,” highlights their outstanding work.
2024/07 – Congratulations to Ming-Yuan Hung (洪名遠) and Yen-Ting Kuo (郭彥廷) on the successful collaboration with Prof. Jih-Jen Wu, now published in Advanced Materials (IF: 27.4). The paper, titled “Dual-Vacancy-Engineered ZnIn2S4 Nanosheets for Harnessing Low-Frequency Vibration Induced Piezoelectric Polarization Coupled with Static Dipole Field to Enhance Photocatalytic H2 Evolution,” highlights their outstanding work.
2024/07 – Congratulations to Yu-Ting Tai(戴郁庭) on the successful collaboration with Prof. Wei-Ren Liu and Prof. Chung-Wei Kung, now published in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces (IF: 8.3). The paper, titled “Two-Dimensional Metal–Organic Frameworks/Epoxy Composite Coatings with Superior O2/H2O Resistance for Anticorrosion Applications,” highlights their outstanding work.
2024/05 – Congratulations to Yen-Ting Kuo (郭彥廷) on the successful collaboration with Prof. Ken Sakaushi (NIMS, U of Tsukuba, Japan), now published in Small (IF: 13.3). The paper, titled “Spontaneous-Spin-Polarized 2D π-d Conjugated Frameworks Towards Enhanced Oxygen Evolution Kinetics,” highlights their outstanding work.
2024/05 – Congratulations to Hong-Kai Chen (陳弘凱), Hong-Zhang Huang (黃泓璋), and Rui-Tong Kuo (郭瑞桐) on the successful collaboration with Prof. Cheng-Shen Yeh and Prof. Wei-Peng Li, now published in Advanced Materials. The paper, titled “Boosting Upconversion Efficiency in Optically Inert Shelled Structures with Electroactive Membrane through Electron Donation,” highlights their outstanding work.

Award and Grant News

News 2025/03 – Congratulations to Ming-Yuan Hung (洪名遠, D2 student) for getting the fully funded internship position at the National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS, 日本國立物質材料研究機構), Japan. He will be working with Dr. Yen-Ju Wu’s group for our collaborative projects for 3 months from 2025 Nov. to 2026 Jan.
^News 2025/02 – Congratulations to Yu-Ting Tai (戴郁庭, D1 student) for being awarded the NSTC PhD Fellowship (國科會博士生研究獎學金), which provides NT$40,000 per month to support her doctoral studies.
^News 2025/01 – We are pleased to announce that our proposal for the Joint Development Project (JDP) with TSMC (台積電), titled “Numerical Simulations of Wet Chemical Cleaning and Lateral Etching Behavior for Small Trenches and Nano-Sheets,” has been awarded. The project will be conducted from 2025/03 to 2026/02.
^News 2025/01 – We are excited to announce that our two-year NSTC international collaboration proposal (2025/04–2027/03) with Dr. Yen-Ju Wu at the National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS, 日本國立物質材料研究機構) has been awarded! The project, titled “利用資料驅動的機器學習模型和第一原理計算進行能源材料的策略性逆向設計,” sets the stage for impactful collaborations and student exchanges over the next two years. We look forward to productive outcomes!
^News 2025/01 – Congrats to Yu-Ting Tai (戴郁庭, D1 student) for the Ministry of Education (MOE) Doctoral Scholarship, which provides 30,000 NTD/month.

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2024/11 – Congrats to our students for getting the following awards:

ICGET-TW 2024 (台灣綠色電化學科技國際研討會) at NCHU
Yu-Ting Tai (戴郁庭, D1) won the Excellent Award in the English Oral Competition.
Hong-Zhang Huang (黃泓璋, M2) won the Best Award in the English Poster Competition.

TwIChE 2024 (台灣化工年會) at CYCU
Yu-Cheng Kuo (郭祐丞, D1) won the Honorable Mention in the English Oral Competition.
Rui-Tong Kuo (郭瑞桐, M2) won the Excellent Award in Poster Competition.
Jing-Yan Wu (吳敬焱, B4) won the Honorable Mention in the English Oral Competition.

A fantastic achievement by these talented and hardworking students!

2024/09 – Congratulations to Prof. Tian on being selected as an Emerging Investigator by the Journal of Materials Chemistry A (IF: 10.7).
2024/09 – Congratulations to Prof. Tian for receiving the 2024 Chemical Engineering Masterpiece Award (化工傑作獎) from the Taiwan Institute of Chemical Engineers (TwiChE, 台灣化學工程學會)!
2024/09 – Congrats to Ming-Yuan Hung (洪名遠, D1 student) for getting the 2nd Best Student Project at the Eindhoven Semicon Summer School held in Eindhoven, The Netherlands, from 08/26-08/30 ( News, YouTube)! This summer school is co-organized by ASML, TSMC, NXP, ASM, Axelera, Neways, and Smart Photonics.
2024/09 – Congrats to Jing-Yan Wu (吳敬焱, B4 undergraduate student) for getting the 成大大專生專題成果海報競賽材化組特優獎.
2024/07 – Congratulations to Jing-Yan Wu (B4 student), whose proposal was awarded an NSTC undergraduate grant (國科會大專生專題計畫). He will be working on sulfide solid electrolytes and the doping strategy for enhancing stability (利用機器學習勢能與第一原理計算探索提升硫化物固態電解質大氣穩定性的摻雜策略).
2024/06 – Congrats to Hong-Zhang Huang (M2 student) and You-Cheng Kou (D1 student) for getting the best English oral presentation award (英文口頭報告特優) and the honorable poster award (海報競賽佳作) at TWCIS2024 conference (2024界面科學年會)
2024/05 – Congrats to Ming-Yuan Hung (洪名遠, D1) for getting the

Best Oral Presentation Award at the 2024 Symposium on Thermodynamics and Process Systems Engineering
2024/03 – Congrats to Yu-Ting Tai (戴郁庭, M1) for getting the poster presentation award at the 2024 International Conference on Hierarchical Green Energy Materials (2024HIGEM)
2024/03 – Congrats to Prof. Tian for getting the Rising Star Award in the College of Engineering of NCKU (成大工學院明日之星獎助).
2024/01 – Congrats to Prof. Tian for getting the 永續跨領域整合型研究優良獎 with Prof. Chuan-Feng Shih (施權峰教授) and Prof. Vincent Wing-hei Lau (劉詠熙教授) for the collaborative work of developing lead-free perovskite solar cells. Special credit goes to our graduate student Zih-Lie Huang (黃子洌) for his excellent work on this project.

Activity News

^News2025/01 – We were delighted to welcome Prof. Yoshitaka Tateyama (Prof. Tian’s former postdoc advisor at NIMS) from Science Tokyo to our group and NCKU! Prof. Tateyama gave two outstanding talks—one at the NCKU ChemE department and another at the AGEM conference. We also had a fantastic time exploring Tainan City together, capped off with great conversations over beer. Looking forward to our next reunion!
^News2025/01 – Welcome a new undergraduate student, Hong-Lin Chen (陳泓霖, B3 student), to join our group.

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2024/11 – Prof. Tian was invited to deliver talks at ICGET-TW 2024 (台灣綠色電化學科技國際研討會) at NCHU and TwIChE 2024 (台灣化工年會) at CYCU.
2024/11 – We were delighted to host Prof. Yue Qi (Brown University, Ph.D. advisor to Prof. Tian) during her visit to Taiwan and NCKU for the ECI Mixed Conducting and Nonstoichiometric Compounds VIII. Prof. Tian was also invited to deliver a talk.
2024/10 – Prof. Tian and three Ph.D. students, Ming-Yuan Hung (洪名遠), Yu-Ting Tai (戴郁庭), Yu-Cheng Kuo (郭祐丞), visited Prof. Atsushi Ishikawa and Prof. Yoshitaka Tateyama (Postdoc advisor to Prof. Tian) at Science Tokyo (東京科學大學, previously known as 東京工業大學), Prof. Ken Sakaushi and Dr. Randy Jalem at University of Tsukuba and NIMS, Japan. We engaged in extensive discussions on future collaborations, student/postdoc exchanges, and joint seminars. We look forward to our next meeting!
2024/10 – Prof. Tian and three Ph.D. students, Ming-Yuan Hung (洪名遠), Yu-Ting Tai (戴郁庭), Yu-Cheng Kuo (郭祐丞), visited Prof. Atsushi Ishikawa and Prof. Yoshitaka Tateyama (Postdoc advisor to Prof. Tian) at Science Tokyo (東京科學大學, previously known as 東京工業大學), Prof. Ken Sakaushi and Dr. Randy Jalem at University of Tsukuba and NIMS, Japan. We engaged in extensive discussions on future collaborations, student/postdoc exchanges, and joint seminars. We look forward to our next meeting!
2024/10 – Prof. Tian was invited as an invited speaker and delivered a talk at PRiME 2024 (環太平洋電化學國際會議) @Honolulu, Hawaii, USA.
2024/10 – Prof. Tian was invited as a keynote speaker and delivered a talk at ACMT2024 (台灣計算力學年會).
2024/09 – We are glad to have Prof. Yumi Yakiyama from the Division of Applied Chemistry at Osaka University (日本大阪大學應用化學系) visit our group! We had fruitful discussions about our previous collaboration work and future collaborations.

2024/08 – Welcome a new administrative assistant, Ya-Hsin Hung (洪亞歆), to join our group
2024/08 – Congratulations to our Ph.D. student, You-Cheng Kuo (郭祐丞), for receiving a Ph.D. fellowship from Delta Electronics (台達電子). The fellowship provides a total of 1,500,000 TWD over 3 years. Upon graduation, You-Cheng will join Delta Electronics.
2024/07 – Our proposal (成大國際合作計畫) with Prof. Ken Sakaushi at the University of Tsukuba has been awarded! (title: 探索有機金屬骨架電催化觸媒的最佳雙金屬組成與活性:結合實驗、理論計算與機器學習模型). Prof. Tian and 3 Ph.D. students will be visiting the University of Tsukuba, the National Institute for Materials Science, and Tokyo Tech this October.
2024/07 – We are glad to invite and host Prof. Hui-Chia Yu from the Department of Computational Mathematics, Science, and Engineering (CMSE) at Michigan State University (美國密西根州立大學) to visit our group and give a talk at NCKU ChemE departments. We also had a fruitful discussion about numerical simulations of electrochemical cells.
2024/07 – Congrats to our M2 students, Hong-Kai Chen (陳弘凱), Yen-Ting Kuo (郭彥廷), and Zih-Lie Huang (黃子洌), for successfully defending their Master’s Theses. We wish them all the best.
2024/07 – Welcome new Master’s students, Kuan-Lun Chen (陳冠綸), Yu-Hsuan Lin (林昱萱), Wei-Xiang Zhou (周維祥), Bing-Xun Zhong (鍾秉勳), and Li-Lun Lin (林立倫), to join our group.
2024/07 – Congratulations on our proposal being awarded a 3-year grant from NSTC, totaling 4.5 million NTD funding. (結合機器學習勢能與多尺度模擬技術深入解析全固態電池的動態機械性衰退現象)
2024/07 – Welcome two undergraduate students, 林正光 (B4 student) and 黃慶維 (B3 student), to join our group!
2024/06 – Congrats to Ming-Yuan Hung (D1 student) on being selected with full funding to attend an NCKU AISSM semiconductor summer school in Eindhoven, the Netherlands. He will be visiting Eindhoven and ASML for a week in late August.
2024/06 – We are glad to invite and host Prof. Ken Sakaushi from NIMS, Japan (日本國立物質材料研究機構), to visit our group and HiGEM and give talks at NCKU and NTHU ChemE departments. We also had a fruitful discussion about our ongoing collaborations on MOF and High-entropy electrocatalysts for hydrogen energy.
2024/06 – Prof. Tian was invited to give a talk at TICC2024 in NTUST. Also, Rui-Tong Kuo gave an English oral presentation about activity predictions of bi-metal catalysts via first-principles calculations and machine-learning potential. Also, Prof. Tian was glad to reunite with his Master’s degree advisor, Prof. Ben-Zu Wan.
2024/06 – We are glad to host Prof. Masashi Kotobuki (MCUT Battery Research Center of Green Energy) for visiting our group and discussing the experimental/computational collaborations on Na-ion conducting solid electrolytes.

2024/06 – Prof. Tian and Prof. Tzung-Fang Guo were glad to host Prof. Yan Yao (University of Houston) and Prof. Bin Hu (University of Tennessee) for their visit to NCKU.
2024/05 – Prof. Tian and two graduate students, Ming-Yuan Hung (洪名遠, D1) and Hong-Zhang Huang (黃泓璋, M2), attended the ACEPS12 conference in Osaka, Japan, and all gave oral talks. Prof. Tian also visited Prof. Yumi Yakiyama‘s lab at Osaka University (大阪大學) and discussed the previous collaboration progress and future work.
2024/05 – Congrats to our Master students (M1), Yu-Ting Tai (戴郁庭) and You-Cheng Kou (郭祐丞), for getting direct admissions to the Ph.D. programs (逕讀博士班) of the Chemical Engineering (化工所) and the Program of Smart and Sustainable Manufacturing (智慧與永續製造學程), respectively, at NCKU with Ph.D. scholarships.
2024/05 – Congrats to Hong-Zhang Huang (黃泓璋, M2) for getting the NCKU scholarship (成大跨國雙向研修獎助學金, 59,000 NTD) to further support his internship at National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS) in Japan from 2024/08 to 2024/11.
2024/04 – Prof. Tian gave a talk at the 2024 MRS Spring Meeting in Seattle, USA. Prof. Tian also gladly reunited with Prof. Yue Qi (Brown University) and Prof. Yoshitaka Tateyama (Tokyo Tech) and discussed recent research work and potential student exchange/visit between our groups.
2024/04 – Prof. Tian attended Frankfurt, Germany, for the annual DE-TW Battery Project meeting (台德雙邊電池計畫會議) and had fruitful discussions with battery experts (both computational and experimental). It is the 7th annual meeting for this DE-TW battery project. Also, many thanks to Prof. Felix Richter for hosting us and giving tours to Prof. Jürgen Janek‘s group at Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen.
2024/03 – Two Industrial cooperation grants (產學計畫) with ITRI (工研院) have been awarded from 2024/03 to 2024/12. (Project titles: 鈣鈦礦量子點合成與塗佈技術開發; 釩離子擴散與平衡研究)
2024/03 – Our industrial Cooperation Grant (產學計畫-成大李國鼎科技與人文講座) with Delta Electronics-Cyntec (台達電子-乾坤科技) has been awarded. We will conduct continuum simulations via Finite Element Analysis to study the inhomogeneous lithium deposition behaviors on uneven lithium metal anodes.
2024/03 – Congrats to Hong-Zhang Huang (黃泓璋, M2) for getting a fully-funded internship offer at the National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS) in Japan. He will be working in Dr. Randy Jalem‘s group from 2024/08 to 2024/10.
2024/02 – Welcome a new undergraduate student (專題生), Zhe-An Zheng (鄭哲安), to join our group.
2024/01 – Congrats to Feye-Feng Lu (陸飛鳳) for successfully defending her Master thesis!
Also, congrats to her for getting a Ph.D. offer in Prof. Yoshitaka Tateyama’s group at the Tokyo Institute of Technology (東京工業大學). She will start her Ph.D. journey in Sep. 2024. We wish her all the best!

©2021 by Hong-Kang Tian