Introduction

History and Status

　　The Department of Physics at the National Dong Hwa University was founded in 1997 initially with the undergraduate program. The Graduate Institute of Applied Physics, which is affiliated with the Department of Physics, was later established in 2001, and started offering the master and doctoral degree programs in 2001 and 2003, respectively.

　　Currently, the department consists of 15 full-time faculty members, 3 joint-appointment faculty members, and 3 staff members. Current enrollment in the department is about 200 undergraduate, 50 M.S., and 10 Ph.D students.

Undergraduate Education and Graduate Study

　　The notable feature of the undergraduate course design at the National Dong Hwa University is “modularization”, that is, grouping courses together as modules whose scopes can be a broad major or a specialized field. The underlying idea is to equip students with solid background knowledge of a major through required core modules and the disciplines of specialized fields through selective modules. Students therefore have the flexibility to customize course combinations to fit their future study or career perspectives. The current curriculum at the Department of Physics contains three core modules: basic sciences, physics core (I), and physics core (II). The department also provides three selective modules: (1) biophysics and materials physics, (2) theoretical and computational physics, and (3) nanophysics and optoelectronic physics. All selective modules contain courses from which students should be able to gain hands-on research experiences by joining laboratories or engaging in mentored independent studies, and this will further enhance students' future competitiveness.

　　The emphasis of graduate study is training a student to carry out an independent research project under the supervision of one's thesis advisor. The basic courses are meant to provide students a solid foundation and sufficient motivation for their thesis research. Additionally, there are advanced courses on fields of active research in the department.

Research

　　The current research areas and active research topics at the Department of Physics include:

• Biophysics: protein folding, protein structure, single molecular detection, mechanism of metalloprotein catalysis, free radical biophysics.
• Computational Physics: nonlinear dynamics in semiconductors; fluids; and medicine, Monte Carlo simulation of lattice protein models, complex networks, computational material science, computational plasma physics.
• Condensed Matter Physics: surface studies using spectroscopic and microscopic techniques, nanostructures, magnetism, superconductivity, low-dimensional materials, thermoelectric materials, thermal and electrical properties of solids, electronic structure of novel materials and point defect.
• Optoelectronic Physics: laser spectroscopy, atomic and molecular physics, quantum control, metrology, quantum optics, semiconductor devices and physics, ultrafast carrier dynamics.
• Theoretical Physics: particle physics, cosmology, nuclear physics, many-body theory.

　　Besides independent research activities, three major interdisciplinary research directives: biophysics, computational physics, and nanophysics, are identified at the departmental level. This is not only to foster collaborative research atmosphere and generate collective research output in the department, but also to integrate laterally with research in other departments (applied mathematics, chemistry, life science, materials science, information science, electrical engineering etc.) and vertically with the development strategy of the university at the cutting-edge new sciences (life science, environmental science, oceanic science etc.).