Part of Taiwan’s “Global Pathfinder Initiative,” Asia University leads a student delegation to UCLA for a nineweek interdisciplinary program spanning quantum science, AI, and biomedicine

Supported by Taiwan’s Ministry of Education “Global Pathfinder Initiative” (青年百億海外圓夢基金計畫), organized by Asia University, and delivered in academic partnership with the UCLA Center for Quantum Science and Engineering (CQSE), the UCLA Summer 2026 Biomedical Engineering × Quantum Science Elite Program runs for nine weeks, from July 6 to September 3, at the University of California, Los Angeles. The program’s first keynote lecture took place on July 7 at UCLA’s School of Engineering, officially opening the course.

The first-day speaker was Dr. KS (John) Huang. Dr. Huang is a former IBM Research staff member, Rockwell Principal Engineer, and Cisco Senior Manager and Technical Leader, and has served as CEO, CTO, and Chief Scientist at several high-tech startups — bringing deep academic and industry experience. Earlier in his career, he studied under Nobel laureate Richard Feynman, renowned for the path-integral formulation of quantum mechanics, quantum electrodynamics (QED), superfluidity, and the parton model in particle physics, and a corecipient of the 1965 Nobel Prize in Physics with Julian Schwinger and Sin-Itiro Tomonaga. Under the title "From Everyday Science & Technology to the Quantum World: Kissing Photons, Electrons and AI/Biology," Dr. Huang guided students from everyday phenomena into the quantum world and its frontier applications in artificial intelligence and biomedicine.

The program brings together distinguished scholars and champions. Program lead professor Academician Kang L. Wang — Distinguished Professor at UCLA and Academician of Academia Sinica — sets the academic vision and anchors UCLA’s world-class faculty and laboratory network. Chair Professor Kuan-Tsae Huang of Asia University serves as Program Leader, overseeing program direction and cross-institutional collaboration. The accompanying faculty mentor, Prof. Hung-Rong Yen — Dean of the College of Chinese Medicine at China Medical University, part of the CMU–Asia University System — guides students’ learning and cultural adjustment. Each afternoon, Course Coordinator Iris Yang leads the teach-back session, in which the three student groups restate the day’s learning in their own words, raise applications and questions, and discuss their research project plans in groups — embodying the program’s “morning input, afternoon output” model.

Students of Asia University’s UCLA Biomedical Engineering × Quantum Science Elite Program in front of UCLA’s Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science.

First-day speaker Dr. KS (John) Huang lectures on the fundamentals of quantum science.

On the program’s first day, students arrived in Los Angeles and moved into their dormitory on July 6; Emily Shen of Taiwan’s Ministry of Education at the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Los Angeles (TECO) kindly helped coordinate their accommodation. A number of local Taiwanese residents and young student volunteers also provided logistical and daily-living support throughout the program — reflecting the shared commitment of government, academia, and the overseas Taiwanese community to nurturing young scholars abroad.

The nine-week program features a distinguished speaker lineup — drawn chiefly from UCLA and including the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), the University of Southern California (USC), UC San Diego (UCSD), and Stanford University — together with industry experts in quantum computing, semiconductors, and healthcare. Spanning quantum science, AI, semiconductors and materials, neuroscience, biomedical engineering, and digital health, the roster gives students direct access to world-class faculty from top universities, across institutions and disciplines, in just nine weeks.

Chair Professor Kuan-Tsae Huang of Asia University noted that the program’s students come from different backgrounds, with different learning experiences, professional foundations, social awareness, maturity, and future goals. The program therefore does not require every student to learn exactly the same content, nor does it measure everyone against a single standard. Even when students attend the same courses, visit the same institutions, and hear the same lectures, each person’s understanding, impressions, reflection, and inspiration may differ; because each encounters different facets, the questions they come to ask and the futures they imagine will also differ. What the program values most is whether students can, through this experience abroad, see their own direction, pose forward-looking and challenging questions, and gradually form directions for future study, research, employment, or entrepreneurship that they can keep pursuing. Through guidance from instructors and generative AI, together with team collaboration, we hope that what students bring back to Taiwan is not only established knowledge, but a set of questions worth exploring over the long term, a vision for the future, and a guiding light to keep moving forward.

The program’s daily "morning input, afternoon output" model integrates quantum science, AI and data analytics, biomedical engineering, neuroscience, digital health, semiconductors and materials, and integrative medicine. Through daily teach-backs, weekly synthesis reports, and a final symposium, students build interdisciplinary integration and international communication skills, completing individual and team research projects presented at the closing symposium.

The "Global Pathfinder Initiative" is a talent-development program supported by Taiwan’s Ministry of Education. This cohort is organized by Asia University in academic partnership with the UCLA Center for Quantum Science and Engineering (CQSE), together with the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering, David Geffen School of Medicine, and UCLA Joe C. Wen School of Nursing, and in collaboration with TAITA-EAST.

First-day speaker Dr. KS (John) Huang with students, the accompanying faculty mentor, and volunteers in the classroom.

Students take part in interactive discussion and course feedback led by Prof. Iris Yang during the first day of the program.