Chun-che Chang, PhD

Chun-che Chang earned his bachelor's degree from the Department of Agricultural Chemistry at National Taiwan University (NTU). Subsequently, he joined the Institute of Biochemistry at NTU and obtained his master's degree in science (Taiwan; Supervisor: Professor Wen-Chang Chang). Prior to pursuing studies in the UK, Chang excelled in the public examination sponsored by the Ministry of Education in Taiwan, securing the top ranking. Sponsored by a government scholarship, Chang pursued his Ph.D. at the Wellcome/CRC Institute (now the Gurdon Institute) and the Department of Genetics at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom (UK). Inspired by Professor Michael Akam, he embarked on a journey in Developmental Biology, delving into the intricate process of how germ cells are specified in the grasshopper Schistocerca gregaria.

After completing postdoctoral training at the University of Leicester (UK; Supervisor: Professor Sir Alec Jeffreys) and Academia Sinica (Taiwan; Supervisor: Professor Bon-Chu Chung), he has been a faculty member in the Department of Entomology at NTU since 2003. Serving as the Chairman of the Department from 2016 to 2019, he currently holds the positions of Professor and Director of the University Press at NTU. Throughout his career, Chang has received the NTU Teaching Excellence Award ten times (2006 to 2023) and the Outstanding Teaching Award in 2018. His dedication to both education and research was further acknowledged when he was recognized as an outstanding junior investigator by the College of Bio-Resources and Agriculture NTU in 2006. Chang's team has been fervently studying the developmental genes involved in asexual (parthenogenetic) and viviparous aphids.

In Taiwan, they have successfully established aphids as a prominent model organism for developmental studies. Particularly at the molecular level, they unraveled the process of how germ cells are specified in asexual and viviparous aphids, identifying the germ plasm in uncellularized embryos. This groundbreaking discovery challenges the traditional notion that hemimetabolous insects, such as aphids, do not rely on a maternal germ plasm to specify germ cells. Furthermore, Chang has been an active member of the International Aphid Genome Consortium (IAGC) since 2008 and is now the founder of the Taiwan Aphid Genome Consortium (TAGC). From 2002 to the present, he has published papers featured on international journal covers eight times. Notably, two of these covers have been acknowledged as iconic by journals, highlighting the international recognition of his research identity and innovation.