Central Taiwan University of Science and Technology
探跡實驗室
Detecting what is
barely there.
Trace analysis and evidence interpretation — and making the result defensible.
About
The better the technology, the smaller the things we can see. Semiconductors moved from 180 nm to 130 nm to today’s 2 nm-class nodes. Venom proteomics followed the same curve: over a decade, mass spectrometry pushed the lowest detectable abundance down by an order of magnitude.
Both fields then hit the same wall. Past a certain scale, refining the old method is no longer enough — the method itself has to change. Semiconductors had to replace the transistor architecture; on the analytical side, matrix interference distorts quantitation and the analytical process can rewrite the very molecule being measured.
That is what TRACE works on: however faint the trace, the right method can follow it back. We work with mass spectrometry and biosensing, we build our own tools, and we let the data decide — which is why our topics look scattered while the method stays the same.
From snake venom to silicon, the tools kept changing while the question did not: how do you tell apart things that are hard to tell apart?
Research
Six lines of work. The shared basis is signal interpretation — whether the signal comes from a mass spectrum, a microscope image, or a table of data.
01
New psychoactive substances are often hidden in everyday carriers, and those atypical matrices distort mass-spectral quantitation. We study matrix effects with GC-MS and LC-MS — and the cases where the analytical process itself rewrites the molecule, turning one compound into another. A long-overlooked source of false positives.
02
How diet, farming practice and environmental change reshape the distribution and transmission routes of parasites — and how that comes back to people. Exploratory stage.
03
Field-effect transistor biosensors (BioFET): probe design, surface functionalisation, and the operating conditions that push past existing sensitivity limits. Currently validated on heavy-metal ions; the approach extends to other analytes read at low concentration.
04
Amphidromous freshwater shrimp have complex life histories, which makes artificial propagation far harder than for landlocked species. We use design of experiments to build a reproducible breeding protocol.
05
Admission route, learning history, hands-on training and licensure performance are entangled variables. Which associations are real, and which are only shared trends? Same problem, different specimen. Analysis is ongoing; findings will be described after formal publication.
06
Before a new identification or susceptibility method enters clinical use, it must be shown equivalent to the established one. We are interested in specimens near the cutoff — where old and new methods disagree, and where a method’s real boundary shows.
People
Assistant Professor ／ PI
Forensic toxicology ×2
Aquaculture breeding
Publications
Peer-reviewed papers and granted patents only.
Contact
Students interested in analytical chemistry, instrumentation or cross-disciplinary work are welcome. No particular background is required — but you have to be willing to build things.
What you will learn here: