One more. Physics and applied physics now working in solar.
Does that surprise you considering this forum is such a bedrock of reason and logic :roflmao: ?
Three and a half.
ABD (unfinished Ph.D.) in I/O Psych, which doesnāt count but it involved a very heavy curriculum of statistics and computer science, plus I minored in math and computer science as an undergrad, and started out in engineering, so I did some of the physics, chemistry and math courses for that in college. I also worked briefly as a programmer and statistical analyst for the US Navy and several large corporations.
Math and statistics. Little to do with what I actually do, except perhaps when I worked as a computer programmer.
Biology/Bio chem. Took me four years to realize it wasnāt what I wanted to do. Oops. Too late.
I did teach animals to the kids in one class today.
I have a BSc in biology and pharmacology. Didnāt want to do a masters or a PhD and wasnāt able to find a job in Canada (maybe I havenāt tried hard enough lol) - I doubt that Taipei would be a very good place for a āscientistā with a kindergarten-level understanding of Mandarinā¦ What was the point of this thread anyways?
Damn, thatās a shame. Hot field right now, you want some contact details?[/quote]
Thanks for the offer. Just saw your email, will reply later tonight when Iām at a computer (hate typing on a phone)[/quote]
Booming in Western Australia if you want to work in mining $$$
Considering going back next year to study in a related field.
Im in the film industry back home (pregnant girlfriend brought me here 
Over editing reality TV shite :fume: even if pays well.
I was wondering that ā¦ was there a reason? Especially since the OP asked about āhardā sciences.
Personally, I thought it was interesting to see a few people here (and other threads) mentioning work in life sciences, āgreenā tech (whatever that is) and suchlike. Iām curious how many of those are working for Taiwanese companies, and how many have been posted here by foreign companies (or run your own company)? In my experience, there isnāt much of a market for that kind of talent here.
finley: Partly, it was just for the sake of starting a conversation and seeing where it would go.
Partly it was to see who had studied science. I think they often have a markedly different slant on life than those who studied humanities or social sciences. I studied psychology and I donāt rate it very highly as a discipline, so thatās why I didnāt want to include social sciences.
I was wondering that ā¦ was there a reason? Especially since the OP asked about āhardā sciences.
Personally, I thought it was interesting to see a few people here (and other threads) mentioning work in life sciences, āgreenā tech (whatever that is) and suchlike. Iām curious how many of those are working for Taiwanese companies, and how many have been posted here by foreign companies (or run your own company)? In my experience, there isnāt much of a market for that kind of talent here.[/quote]
There are very very few foreigners working life science in Taiwan. I can count on one hand the long-term Western foreigners I know. I worked in ITRI briefly and in the overall life science/medical device facility (which must employ 100s of staff) I only knew one long-term Western researcher. His case was so special he is challenging for a pension as after 10 years there you can apply for a pension stipend (nice deal eh?), Iām not sure if he can get it or not. I left ITRI after a very short-time because I did not want to be the foreign monkey sorry foreign special representative. They were very kind and nice people but by that time I had had enough of being the only āforeignerā and wanted to get away from that.
There are some good Taiwanese life science companies but not big players on the world stage in general, it is a relatively new and small industry but it is also very broad so it depends exactly what area you are talking about. Little known is that Taiwan is a leader in biosensor testing for the consumer market (mostly OEM manufacture), there are successs stories when they meld the local electronic industry or manufacturing industry into the pie. Remote medical devices for consumers are probably going to be big here too. Some Taiwanese companies are advanced in PLA manufacture (a type of natural plastic). There are many manufacturers of low-end medical disposable products. Flower biotechnology is a big business here as is seed and vegetable biotechnology. Core biotechnology research and innovations arenāt so strong though, one of the reasons is, just like us foreigners, many talented Taiwanese get pissed off and move to get better money in the US or China these days.
To answer the earlier post, there is a market for talent here but they donāt pay a whole lot, itās a small pool and not enough competition for the best people and the ways companies are structured most are owned by a few core shareholders who are keen to maximise their own earnings at expense of staff earnings, a common story in Taiwan. To increase my earnings I was forced (although I also chose that happily) to work for an international life science company as the local companies simply wonāt/canāt match the pay on offer.
Well just overviewing the above Taiwan does punch above itās weight in terms of life science overall, but still a minnow compared to the electronics and semicon industries here.
[quote=āGuyInTaiwanā]finley: Partly, it was just for the sake of starting a conversation and seeing where it would go.
Partly it was to see who had studied science. I think they often have a markedly different slant on life than those who studied humanities or social sciences. I studied psychology and I donāt rate it very highly as a discipline, so thatās why I didnāt want to include social sciences.[/quote]
I do not see the issue with your thread it was quite an interesting little thread and I was also curious to know the answer. Nice thread 
oh ā¦ I wasnāt criticizing. I was just wondering out loud if GuyInTaiwan had a particular reason for asking ā¦ maybe he was thinking of getting out of the english āteachingā business or something!
hmm ā¦ dunno. An ex studied sociology, and she was one of the smartest, most switched-on people Iāve ever met (although FWIW she also thought sociology was an immense load of elephant bollocks). And one snippet I do remember from psychology (when I wasnāt sleeping though my lectures) is that thereās a correlation between mathematical ability and musical talent. I think the dividing line between āscientificā people and ānon-scientificā people is artificial, and quite a recent one at that. It wasnāt so long ago that if you wanted to call yourself an intellectual, you were expected to be a polymath ā¦ an expert on everything from shagging to sheep-shearing, preferably without getting them confused.
Besides, I remember some quite horrendous mathematics in our psychology statistics module. Maths has never been my strong point (I max out somewhere around partial differential equations) and that was quite challenging stuff. I know for a fact that half of the class didnāt even bother listening, and they didnāt formally test us on it because they knew that half the class didnāt bother listening. Also, as I mentioned, they spent a lot of time teaching us how to be rigorous scientists - principally because there is so much bullshit in social sciences. Maybe my uni was unusual.
Thatās pretty much what I thought. Like you, Iāve noticed that the token foreigner does tend to fill a ācome and look at our [strike]monkey[/strike]foreignerā role. However, although Taiwan does excel in certain niche industries in the electronics market, I wouldnāt say theyāre especially good at that either. In my experience theyāve been slipping further and further behind the curve, to the point where 90% of the ICs available in Taiwan are ten-year-old technology (compared to, say, some of the big US/EU names). For example, theyāve only recently (<5 years) started to adopt 32-bit microprocessors for embedded applications - thatās a full 17 years after ARM released the (still-popular) ARM7 core. Basically, theyāre still chasing big customers trying to secure million-piece orders with cheap, mediocre stuff that is now made better and cheaper in China.
oh ā¦ I wasnāt criticizing. I was just wondering out loud if GuyInTaiwan had a particular reason for asking ā¦ maybe he was thinking of getting out of the english āteachingā business or something!
[.[/quote]
oh okay I get it. Sorry! 
:bravo:
BS: Chemical engineering
MEng: Energy engineering, solar option
Now in charge of running two firms: a medium one making electronic components and the other small one making natural herbal materials (without plasticizers) using extensive knowledge in organic chemistry, material science, electronics, mechanical engineering, business administration, etc., of which I acquired enough in academy.
[quote=āgolfā]BS: Chemical engineering
MEng: Energy engineering, solar option
Now in charge of running two firms: a medium one making electronic components and the other small one making natural herbal materials (without plasticizers) using extensive knowledge in organic chemistry, material science, electronics, mechanical engineering, business administration, etc., of which I acquired enough in academy.[/quote]
I would have thought a chemist would be well into using plasticizers :roflmao:
I canāt see what else Iād get into other than English teaching at this point. Iām basically riding this one out until my net worth hits a certain (inflation adjusted) figure. Then Iām walking away. From that point on, who knows. Weāll almost certainly be homeschooling our kids and we might end up buggering off on extended vacations each year or even living elsewhere (the idea of moving somewhere in the Southern Cone appeals to me so that our kids could become trilingual, though there are other places on my list too). Iāve never really wanted a career anyway.
My point about the social sciences and humanities is simply that thereās way too much ideology and political correctness that informs many of those disciplines. Itās a freakinā minefield half the time.
[quote=āGuyInTaiwanā]I canāt see what else Iād get into other than English teaching at this point. Iām basically riding this one out until my net worth hits a certain (inflation adjusted) figure. Then Iām walking away. From that point on, who knows. Weāll almost certainly be homeschooling our kids and we might end up buggering off on extended vacations each year or even living elsewhere (the idea of moving somewhere in the Southern Cone appeals to me so that our kids could become trilingual, though there are other places on my list too). Iāve never really wanted a career anyway.
My point about the social sciences and humanities is simply that thereās way too much ideology and political correctness that informs many of those disciplines. Itās a freakinā minefield half the time.[/quote]
Hey leave it out that is very politically incorrect to say the social sciences are politically correct :roflmao:
I was pretty good with Chemistry and biology in high school. You know, moles, avogadroās, clades and stuff.