Center for Biotechnology and Biomedical Engineering (CBB)
Biotechnology is one of the most important interdisciplinary research filed. The CBB not only implements and facilitates multidisciplinary projects connecting departments of the National Central University (NCU) and off-campus institutes in Taiwan, such as Academia Sinica, Cathay General Hospital, National Defense Medical Center, Tri-Service General Hospital, and Landseed hospital, but also has cross-border cooperation programs with the University of Tokyo, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Harvard Medical School, and Stanford Sleep Medicine Center. Our research groups actively contribute to the biomass energy and the biomedicine research activities of the “Aim for the Top University Project” in the NCU.
In the field of biomass energy, the biotechnology is applied to a number of subjects related to waste reduction, reduction of the carbon emission, and energy production, and from which to explore new biological resources, e.g. unique microorganisms and enzymes. The achievement has been recognized by the National Science and Technology Program, Bureau of Energy grant and Institute of Nuclear Energy Research grant, while the technical and intellectual properties are protected with a number of patents and are honored by national awards.
For modern medicine, one of the major challenges it faced is the rising cost of healthcare, which in part stems from the cost on systemic chronic diseases. The preemptive medicine, that is, early detection, intervention and treatment of diseases before the symptoms emerge, is one of the promising solutions to the challenge because the high possibility of reversibility of many diseases at the early stage can significantly reduce the cost of long-term care. Other challenges facing modern medicine are to resolve the uneven distribution of resources, inconvenience and unreasonably high cost for treatment in the existing medical system, which lead us to think of the questions about how to make medical devices compact in order to extend the coverage of medical care to the area of insufficient resources and how to help patients with early detection and early treatment of diseases in order to gain control over the diseases.
The CBB is aimed at making a breakthrough beyond the limits of the current medical system by developing a self-wearable smart medical system that is capable of monitoring multiple dynamical biomarkers. By designing wearable sensors for the measurement of biological signals including the brain waves (Electroencephalography, EEG), heart rhythms (Electrocardiography, ECG), blood oxygen percentage (Photo-Plethysmography, PPG), blood pressure (BP) and many others , and constructing the onboard computing platform, the wearable system efficiently computes various biomarkers, such as the indices of obstructive sleep apnea, stroke, myocardial infarction, coronary artery disease, heart failure and stress, etc. Access and analysis of the long-term recordings of the dynamical biomarkers are also made available by connecting the wearable devices to the cloud computing servers.
The CBB periodically organizes seminars and forums and invites international biotechnology experts and professors to share teaching and research and industry experience.
Director
Prof. Men-Tzung Lo
Office: R3-211, Center for Space and Remote Sensing Research, National Central University
Phone: 03-4227151 Ext. # 34952
E-mail: mzlo@ncu.edu.tw