Organizers: Chinese Institute of Engineers, Taiwan Photonics Society, The Society of Taiwan Women in Science and Technology, IEEE Taipei Section, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University. 

Co-Organizer: Ministry of Science and Technology (MoST), Taiwan.

In this convention, outstanding women from the fields of Photonics, semiconductors, artificial intelligence, finance, biotechnology, engineering, and renewable energy were invited to share their perspective and achievements of sustainable development, leadership creation and establishment of technological models. The last part of the convention, participants were invited to jointly propose practical solutions by strategies from the research community and large and small enterprises as a model. Below are the remarks given.

Paradigm Shift of the Technology Industries: Speaking from Female Power of AI
Speaker: Dr. Trista Chen, Chief AI Officer, Inventec Corporation 

There is a very serious issue called “Biased Decision” in the AI field because AI will learn the data and imitates people’s behavior. That is, if people feed the biased data to AI then AI will behavior biased. In the case of Amazon, when the company used AI to screen employees, but the result identified only white men who graduated from Ivy. This was because HR gave AI the biased data which resulted in a biased decision. Hopefully every field can eliminate gender gap in the future. People can open their eyes and let capable girls carry forward in all field. 

Women’s Roles in Global Sustainable Development
Speaker: Dr. Huey-Jen Jenny Su, President, National Cheng Kung University ; Su-Jen Kuo, Chairman, RICH Development Co, Ltd ; Dr. Huey-Chin Tsai, President & Board Director, HIWIN Technologies Corp ; Lora Ho, Senior Vice President, TSMC (Shown in Figure 5); Sophia Cheng, Chief Investment Officer, Cathay Financial Holdings 

TSMC encourages women work in to workplace. Career women usually face care-taker responsibilities. The child care center of TSMC did not provide sufficient space so Lora Ho, senior vice president of TSMC, advised to extend the child care center of TSMC. The intentions are that if a company takes good care of their employees’ children and assists with work-life balance, there will be a higher retention of women able to work. 

Leadership Roles and Leading to Advance
This is due to only focusing on the market of Taiwan and not investing resources in building talent in Taiwan. Changes have been made and new medicine research is connecting local students as well as foreign talent. Students from Taiwan are also being encouraged to travel abroad for development and academic exchange, and, in turn, gather international knowledge.

Speaker: Dr. Li-Chyong Chen, Distinguished Research Fellow, Center for Condensed Matter Sciences, National Taiwan University 

When I studied in Harvard, I learned two things. First is asking questions in the class. There was only one American student that would ask more than ten questions in class, and other Asian students would think asking questions in class was odd. However, the American took it for granted that asking question is a normal thing. After that, I went to ask the teacher whether he would think asking questions would bother him or not. His answer, “There are no stupid questions,” impressed me. Asking questions allows the teacher to review his teaching methods. The second thing I learned was hands-on. When I first enrolled in class, I had to read the manual carefully before I dared to do it. However, the American classmate didn’t read the manual and did it directly, because American education is about DIY. If there is a huge gap between the standards you set and what you can really achieve, this is the biggest source of frustration. Therefore, you must adjust to a reasonable goal so that the frustration will not be so great. 

Speaker: Dr. Grace Yeh, Chairman and CEO, Onward Therapeutics SA

After graduating from the Department of Biology of the University, I chose biostatistics. At that time, I adopted the school’s suggestion to change my major to immunology, but it took 5 years to study for a Ph.D. At that time, immunology was very new, and no one thought that immunology would become very advanced now. Therefore, when sometimes there are other options, you should also consider them, and don’t refuse them right away. After that, my Ph.D. only took 2 years and 9 months. When I was only 4 credits left, the biostatistics that I had taken at the time allowed me to take the key subjects that I could get credits without taking the exams. Therefore, the transition in life is hard to predict. 

When I was in France for 9 years, I could retire directly. However, I did not want to do the same thing from age 30 to age 60 so I decided to pursue biotechnology work in the United States. So I want to tell the students that when you encounter opportunities, although you may not be sure you can do it now, you must try. If you fail, and it does not matter. But if you succeed, you can continue to make progress. 

Jumping Out of the Box in Realizing Friendly Workplaces
Speakers: Dr. Minn-Tsong Lin, Deputy Minister, Ministry of Science and Technology ; Shun-Lien Sung, CEO, Microwork Co, Ltd ; Milan Chang, Talent Acquisition Director, Micron Technology, Inc

At present, the number of female executives is low. Take Micron’s talent recruitment as an example. Every year, “Diversity, Equality, and Inclusion” and six promises are released. Each promise sets goals and monitors them and puts them on the website every year. Above, the first is “Increase representation of underrepresented groups”, that is, the proportion of women within the company cannot be too different from the outside. The second is equal pay for equal work, the third is to create an inclusive culture, and the fourth is to support the provision of ethnic and legal counsel for LGBTQ+, the other is that in addition to diversification of recruitment and employee composition, suppliers and financial institutions should also be diversified. The administrative units are responsible for the above six and report directly to the CEO.

To achieve “Inclusive Hiring”, Micron did three things. Firstly, “Implement Diverse Interview Slate”, when there is a vacancy, interviewers will be checked whether there are enough diverse candidates. Not all candidates are from the same ethnic group. There must be at least 2 people from minority ethnic groups; the second is “Candidate Allies”. In addition to the diversity of candidates, if the interviewer is female and sees that there are also female leaders in the company, someone will check for bias during the interview; The last Launch AI tool to anonymize resumes (Blind CV) is to remove the prejudicial things in the CV, such as name, gender, age, birth, and reduce the above things that cause prejudice.