Duration of program:Students will need to enter Taiwan before 31 December 2024

Target audience:
A) Applicants who register as an undergraduate student;
B) Applicants who do not hold a Ph.D. degree nor currently register as a Ph.D. student;
C) Applicants who have never been to Taiwan for degree programs, short-term program, exchange program or TEEP

Duration of internship: 6 months max

Fund: NT$15,000/ month/ intern (Intern's subsidy should be at least NT$12,000/ month; the remaining could be used for consumables and service fees)

Professor Wu's laboratory focuses on the research of bioactive secondary metabolites of natural products, aiming at the development of botanical new drugs or single compound new drugs from natural products. The research materials include Formosan plants and endophytic fungi. Through field surveys, Formosan plants are collected, identified, and subjected to small-scale extractions to establish an extraction database. With bioactivity screening, bioactive plants were identified as potential targets for further research. Additionally, our laboratory has recently been studying the active components of endophytic fungi, using the concept of "one strain many compounds" (OSMAC) as exploration techniques to search for optimal fermentation conditions, bridging the gap between academia and industry. After we confirm the research target, the bioassay-guided fractionation method is employed to search for active leading compounds. In Professor Wu's laboratory, you can learn the chemical techniques of natural product separation, such as thin-layer chromatography and column chromatography. You will also acquire skills in chemical structure identification, utilizing nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (NMR), infrared spectroscopy (IR), ultraviolet–visible spectroscopy (UV), Circular dichroism spectroscopy (CD), specific rotation, and in silico computation for structure elucidation. The fermentation technology of fungi, including fungal isolation, purification, and exploration of fermentation conditions, is also covered.