Through the years, IAMS has been supported by many intelligent students, research assistants, and postdoctoral fellows. We have invited some of our alumni to share their experience at IAMS.
First, we will hear from Prof. Chia C. Wang, who studied at IAMS from 1998 to 2002. Presently, she is an associate professor at the Department of Chemistry and the Director of the Aerosol Science Research Center at the National Sun Yat-sen University.
“One day at IAMS, whole life in science”
My academic career began at the Institute of Atomic and Molecular Sciences (IAMS) where I did my M.Sc. at the National Taiwan University under the supervision of Prof. Yuan T. Lee in 1998. My life has not been the same ever since. I received my B.S. from the National Kaohsiung Normal University and received the complete training to become a high school science teacher. After teaching science in a junior high school for two years (including a 1-year internship), I heeded the calling to pursue higher education and satisfy my curiosity regarding the unknown in the universe.
I vividly remember the day when Prof. Yuan T. Lee led me across the gates of IAMS and into Laboratory 408, where a laser alignment was being performed. I was stunned by the green light (532 nm laser) shining in the laboratory, which lit up the whole room as well as my academic career. That day was certainly the turning point of my life. I was fortunate enough to learn and grow under the guidance of Prof. Yuan T. Lee. I still keep his hand-written notes that he wrote during our weekly group meetings. During my days at IAMS, I was able to immerse myself in this leading research institute where I received solid hands-on training to carry out challenging experiments to explore the frontiers of chemical dynamics. While at IAMS, I also got the valuable opportunities to learn from top scientists, especially Drs. Xueming Yang and Jim Jr.-Min Lin, for which I am forever grateful. During this period, my vision of how good science should be pursued was unknowingly established, which paved the way to my later career.
I obtained my Ph.D at UC Berkeley under the supervision of Prof. Daniel M. Neumark, and I received complete training to become a scientist. I did my first postdoctoral research at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory where I applied femtosecond time-resolved EUV radiation generated from high-harmonic generation mechanism to study the ultrafast photodynamics of supercooled helium nanodroplets. I subsequently moved to the University of British Columbia, Canada, to pursue my second postdoctoral study, where I applied time-resolved vibrational spectroscopic methods to study the properties of interstellar aerosols, particularly those present in Titan. I returned to Taiwan to join the faculty of the Department of Chemistry at the National Sun Yat-sen University (NSYSU) in 2010. Because of the multifaceted challenges associated with air pollution and anthropogenic aerosols in the Earth’s atmosphere, I decided to shift my research focus back to terrestrial aerosols. In the past decade, I have dedicated myself to developing new experimental techniques that can help us better understand the intrinsic physicochemical properties of aerosols of various origins. By considering the broad scope of aerosols and the multiple critical issues related with aerosols, I helped establish the Aerosol Science Research Center at NSYSU, the first aerosol-focused research center in Asia in 2017.
When I look back at my career so far, I am grateful to IAMS for the valuable experiences during that period, which enabled me to grow in my academic career; these experiences helped me to develop the courage to face and challenge the unknown, the vision to build a new scientific field to solve important problems, and necessary skills to realize my goals!
