The National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) proactively builds bridges and establishes platforms for international cooperation in several key fields. To boost these efforts, representatives from NARLabs traveled to London to participate in the CogX Festival, one of the world's largest science and technology events, where they showcased Taiwan's semiconductor development and its achievements in AI chips, organs-on-chips, cybersecurity, net-zero emissions, semiconductor talent training, and more. By demonstrating Taiwan's strengths in software and hardware, it is hoped that even more channels for collaboration with other countries around the world can be opened.

First held in 2017, the CogX Festival has become one of the world's most well-known tech gatherings. This year's Festival, held from Sept. 12 to 14, focused on the challenges that humanity will face over the next decade in the Exponential Age. CogX invites technology, business, government, science, and academic organizations and departments, as well as over 500 speakers from all over the world, such as Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, Hugging Face co-founder Thomas Wolf, and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, to communicate on a variety of issues related to tech development, covering fields including semiconductors, cyber and AI security, clean energy, education, and industrial transformation. A total attendance of over 90,000 people was predicted for the three-day event.

Led by NARLabs Vice President Bou-Wen Lin, NARLabs' seven national research centers joined up to showcase Taiwan's major achievements in six areas at CogX, including semiconductor development, under the theme of "Innovating Science and Technology, Safeguarding Taiwan." Through NARLab's participation, the world was able to see how the research and services provided by NARLabs not only assists Taiwan's academic and research communities in creating local value, but also can compete with the world's top tech. Furthermore, NARLabs also demonstrated its talent training capabilities established through the integration of government, industrial, academic, and research sectors for all to learn from.

NARLabs also exhibited two pieces of frontier technology: the sloped rolling-type bearing (SRB) and the horizontal shake table developed by the National Center for Research on Earthquake Engineering (NCREE), the former of which has already been applied in many countries and has helped save billions in economic losses from recent earthquakes. Meanwhile, the National Laboratory Animal Center (NLAC), the Taiwan Instrument Research Institute (TIRI), and the Taiwan Semiconductor Research Institute (TSRI) demonstrated how they combined their technological strengths and worked with academic institutions to develop several types of organs-on-chips. These chips, which combine microfluidic devices, simulated organ microenvironments, and micro-electromechanical biomedical chips, are important translational research tools for the next generation and will accelerate the development of new pharmaceuticals and precision medicine.

The Semi Impact Summit, a focal event at CogX Festival, was held on Sept. 14. Many representatives from NARLabs were invited to be keynote speakers, including Director-General Chau-Lyan Chang of the National Center for High-performance Computing (NCHC), Deputy Director-General Ying-Zung Juang of TSRI, Deputy Director-General Juin-Fu Chai of NCREE, Director Mei-Yu Chang of NARLabs' Office of International Affairs, and associate researcher Chih-Sheng Yu from TIRI. NARLabs representatives not only took the opportunity to share Taiwan's experience and development of frontier technologies with the world, but also advanced efforts to attract more collaborative projects between NARLabs and international industries, academic institutions, and research organizations through the event.