Institute of BioAgricultural Sciences (Preparatory Office)

The Academia Sinica established a "Biotechnology Promotion Committee" in July, 1994. President Y. T. Lee appointed Dr. Ken Wu as the Key Coordinator, Dr. Ray Wu as the Chairman of the Agricultural Section. In mid 1995, the Academy completed a "Points to consider for the Comprehensive Planning of the Agricultural Biotechnology Center at Academia Sinica". In 1996, the Academy started the search and recruitment process of the High Level Science and Technology Experts at an international level. Between January to August, 1997, we have selected, elected and appointed Dr. Ning-Sun Yang as Director of IBAS, and Drs. K. J. Cheng, Huey-Lang. Yang, S. M. Liang, Chi-Yao Chang, Ming-Tsair Chan, Lie-Fen Shyur, Yee-Yung Charng, and Jin-Hao Liu as Principal Investigators, at varying rankings of the new institution. In June 1996, the Academy's Institutional Management Meeting voted and suggested that the Academy should first establish an Institute of BioAgricultural Sciences, and later transform it to a biotechnology center.

Research

For more than two years, we have evaluated and characterized the significance and potential of developing agricultural biotechnology in Taiwan. We have chosen at this time the following six research areas as our targets for developing platform technology programs.
  1. Post-Harvest and Disease Resistance Biotechnology.
  2. Transgenic Plants as Bioreactors.
  3. Animal Vaccines and Transgenesis.
  4. Aquacultural Biotechnology: Transgenesis and Disease Control.
  5. Environmental and Industrial Enzyme Biotechnology.
  6. Chinese Herb/Medicinal Plants.

Major Results

The Preparatory Office of the IBAS has been designed and positioned to engage in upstream, emerging biotechnological research, and to employ team work and group effort for pursing high quality, mission-oriented research and development programs. Hence, IBAS has already started networking with the five Life-Science institutes, namely Botany, Zoology, Molecular Biology, and the BioMedical Sciences Institutes, aiming at establishing Animal Vaccines, Transgenic Plants, Aquaculture research programs. On the other hand, we have also contacted various institutions outside the Academy, including DCB, various departments of National Taiwan University, Taiwan Sugar company, Taiwan Agricultural Experimental Station, Chinese Chemical Pharmaceutical Corp. and others This networking is designed to establish R&D programs for subtropical flowers, Chinese herb medicine and infections diseases of pigs. We believe that we have obtained good, initial specific collaborative business interactions.

We are completing the setting up of eight research laboratories, and appointed postdoctoral and technical persitions. We are beginning to start the second phase recruitment of research fellows, aiming to appoint 11 more Principal Investigators. For the 7 research fellows we have already appointed, we are actively engaging ourselves in preparing research grant proposals for NSC, grouping to form research teams, and defining specific aims of various research projects. All of these efforts are designed to encourage and develop "organic" team work, coordination and cultivation of highly collaborative, efficiency mission-oriented R&D programs.

* Tel: 886-2-2651-5911; Fax: 886-2-2651-5600