Taiwan GlycoForum was established in 2011 as an informal association of Taiwan Investigators engaged in glycoscience research. Membership is free and interested investigators can join voluntarily or by invitation. Currently, there are more than 60 PIs on board. With an average of 5 -10 lab members per PI, the network reaches out to over 300 scientists including students, postdocs and research assistants. The main functioning of this Forum is glyco-related information dissemination through the mailing list, maintained by Dr KH Khoo. A regular annual event is the Glyco-Retreat, which has been held since 2011.
The forum enjoys close tie with the Taiwan Glycoscience Foundation, which helps to administer the financial aspects of running the annual Glyco-Retreat. It has worked with the Taiwan Ministry of Science & Technology (MoST) funded Glycoscience Research Program, which offered glycoscience related research grants, technical core supports, seminars, courses, workshops and an annual Symposium in the period 2013-18. A nine-membered Executive Committee was formed in 2014, chaired by Dr. Fu-Tong Liu, to manage the increasingly expanding Forum activities, as well as overseeing the MoST Glycoscience Research Program.
Glyco-Retreat 2019 in April and the Summer Course offered in July, 2019 were the last two events to be held before the COVID-19 pandemic swept across the entire world. After almost two years without activity and postponing twice, Glyco-Retreat 2022 was eventually held in May 2022, during which a transition plan into a more formal Taiwan Glycoscience Alliance was announced to all participants. It is anticipated that Taiwan GlycoForum will cease to function as an entity after the launch of TGA in early 2023.
Executive Committee
The current committee members (serving since 2014) are :
Fu-Tong Liu (Chair), IBMS, Academia Sinica, Taipei
Kay-Hooi Khoo, IBC, Academia Sinica, Taipei
Chun-Hung Lin, IBC, Academia Sinica, Taipei
Shang-Cheng Hung, GRC, Academia Sinica, Taipei
Edmond SL Hsieh, GRC, Academia Sinica, Taipei
Alice Yu, Chang Gung Medical Foundation, Taoyuan
Huey-Kang Sytwu, NHRI, Hsinchu
Chun-Cheng Lin, NTHU, Hsinchu
Chuan-Fa Chang, NCKU, Tainan