In November 2023, NSTC and France signed a ministerial-level Science and Technology Cooperation Convention (STC), which outlines six key areas of focus, including Semiconductors and Quantum, Health, Ocean, “Digital, Cybersecurity and Artificial Intelligence”, “Green Industry and Energy, Decarbonisation”, and Space. The agreement also specifies that both sides will regularly hold joint Taiwan-France scientific research workshops.

The applicant and also the contact person for this workshop, serving as the cybersecurity coordinator, participated in the 1st Taiwan-France Science and Technology Conference on April 29-30, during which he met the French cyber lead, Prof. Jean-Yves Marion. Since then, both sides have begun searching for common research topics and teams through online meetings. For example, the LORIA Project, led by Prof. Marion, has already started concrete collaboration discussions on malware detection with the researcher Meng Chang Chen (Academia Sinica) and assistant professor Yi-Ting Huang (Taiwan Tech).

Following active coordination between BFT (Bureau français de Taipei) and NSTC, the first bilateral AI and cybersecurity workshop is planned for early November. Director Frédéric Pascal, the AI lead in France, and Prof. Marion are inviting French experts and scholars to Taiwan, where they will exchange views with Taiwanese researchers on seven topics: Malware, Cryptography, Disinformation/Anti-fraud, Frugal AI, AI and Health, Generative AI, and the Interdisciplinary aspects of AI and Cybersecurity. The current plan is to hold a one-and-a-half-day workshop on November 4th and 5th, with each session featuring two French scholars and two Taiwanese scholars, each delivering a 20-minute presentation. Thus, a total of 14 experts and scholars from each side will participate. It is noteworthy that this workshop is not solely focused on STEM. In the sessions on Disinformation/Anti-fraud and Interdisciplinary aspects of AI and Cybersecurity, experts and scholars from the fields of humanities, social sciences, and law will engage in cross-disciplinary dialogue.

For the planning and execution of this event, the applicant would like to thank Kevin Chuang from NSTC and Pauline Ravinet and Yannis Kemel from BFT for their initial communication and coordination. The applicant also wants to thank Prof. Tsungnan Lin from National Taiwan University for handling the venue reservations, setup, and dinner preparations, as well as the TACC (Taiwan Academic Cybersecurity Center) promotion office for assisting with the coordination of domestic participating scholars. By allowing more experts and scholars in the fields of AI, cybersecurity, and digital technology to meet and discuss directly, this workshop will effectively and swiftly establish further collaborative research between the two sides.