The globally minded team at CAPRI’s main office are working to make Taipei a nexus of innovative ideas from all over the world.
Syaru Shirley Lin, research professor at the Miller Center and a nonresident senior fellow in the Foreign Policy Program at the Brookings Institution, teaches at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Tsinghua University in Beijing, and National Chengchi University in Taipei. Lin is the founder and chair of the Center for Asia-Pacific Resilience and Innovation (CAPRI) and a steering committee member of the Partnership for Health System Sustainability and Resilience under the World Economic Forum.
Her book, Taiwan’s China Dilemma, analyzes the impact of the evolution of Taiwanese national identity on cross-Strait economic policy. Lin is currently writing a book on the challenges facing high-income societies in Asia Pacific, including inequality, demographic decline, inadequate policy and technological innovation, and threats to public health and environmental sustainability. Her commentaries frequently appear in both English and Chinese media. Previously, she was a partner at Goldman Sachs, where she led the firm’s private equity and venture capital efforts in Asia.
Cecilia Yin joined CAPRI in 2021 as part of its founding team.
Previously, Cecilia worked as an executive assistant in the Securities Division of Goldman Sachs (Asia) in the Hong Kong office from 1993 to 2015. She was responsible for administrative duties and client coordination for the Division, managing support staff and providing secretarial assistance to the Division Head.
Prior to joining CAPRI, Cecilia worked as Chief of Staff at Zheng He Capital, a private equity firm in Hong Kong, overseeing daily office operation, covering human resources-related matters and client events coordination.
Cecilia currently resides in Taipei, Taiwan.
Yulan Hsu joined CAPRI in 2022. Yulan has been involved in non-profit organizations (NPOs) management in Taiwan for over a decade, and currently serves as Director of Taiwan Women’s Link. She has extensive knowledge of strategic planning and interdepartmental coordination to assist decision-making in the organization and advise its long-term development.
Throughout her career, Yulan has held a strong commitment to women rights and social equality. Previously, Yulan has led and contributed to various Taiwanese NPOs, including National Alliance of Taiwan Women’s Associations, Legal Aid Foundation, Taipei Women’s Rescue Foundation, Ama Museum, among others. She was also appointed as the Secretary to the Commissioner of Department of Social Welfare in Taipei City Government.
Yulan is a native Taiwanese. She holds a Bachelor degree in sociology from National Taiwan University and a Master degree in sociology from Soochow University.
Caroline Fried joined the team that founded CAPRI in 2021. She has research experience in the economics, politics, development, and history of the Asia Pacific, particularly Taiwan and China. She has also researched the cross-border flows of students in higher education and the internationalization of higher education systems.
Before joining CAPRI, Caroline was an academic editor and research assistant in Taipei. Caroline hails from North Carolina, and she holds bachelor’s degrees in international affairs and history from Northeastern University, Boston, MA. Upon completing her undergraduate studies, Caroline was awarded a Fulbright grant to complete a master’s degree in Asia-Pacific studies at National Chengchi University, Taipei. She has called Taipei home since 2017.
Siwei Huang is part of the founding team of CAPRI. He has conducted interdisciplinary research on Taiwan, Hong Kong, and international affairs. Specifically, he has done research on the evolution of identity in Taiwan and Hong Kong, especially in the context of their relations with China. He has also examined the issues of environmental sustainability and internationalization in Taiwan, as well as the policy-making process in Hong Kong and its implications for state-society relations. He closely monitors developments in US-China relations and tracks how they affect various stakeholders in Asia.
Before joining CAPRI, Siwei was a research assistant at the Department of Social Sciences, Education University of Hong Kong. A native of Hunan, Siwei graduated from Hong Kong Baptist University in applied economics with First Honors and received his master’s degree in global political economy from The Chinese University of Hong Kong. Having experienced the global-local nexus in Asia’s World City, Siwei values diversity and openness in the formation of a more vibrant and inclusive community.
Meng-Ju Hsieh joined CAPRI as a Research Associate in May 2023. A native of Taipei, Meng-Ju received his bachelor’s degrees in philosophy and economics from National Chung Cheng University in Taiwan and a master’s degree in philosophy, politics and economics from University of Groningen in the Netherlands.
Before joining CAPRI, Meng-Ju was an assistant research fellow at Prospect Foundation, where he conducted policy research for over three years. His previous work involved analyzing the geopolitical and security implications of current events for U.S.-China relations and cross-strait relations. He also helped facilitate the institution’s exchange and cooperation with its global counterparts.
Meng-Ju is passionate about fostering dialogue across different disciplines and is interested in the normative aspects of policy analysis. He enjoys conversations with diverse groups and hopes for a just, caring, peaceful and prosperous society.
Dr. Christine Cook is a visiting assistant professor at National Chengchi University. She specializes in communication science and media psychology and is active in the International Communication Association (ICA). She is also a member of the editorial boards of the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication and the Journal of Media Psychology. The broad goals of her work are to increase online civility, and her work with CAPRI focuses on bringing the Asian perspective to work focused traditionally in the Western world.
Austen Wei is an Administrative Associate at CAPRI. Prior joining CAPRI, Austen coordinated several international programs at National Chengchi University (NCCU). Her most recent position was at the College of Global Banking and Finance at NCCU, where her duties as the dean’s secretary included budgeting, managing projects, and managerial administration to ensure that the college’s operations ran efficiently. She received her M.A. from Durham University in the United Kingdom, specializing in democratization in East Asia. Austen also has a background in English literature at National Sun Yat-Sen University in Kaohsiung, Taiwan.
Joy Yun-Ju Huang is an event coordinator at CAPRI. Before joining CAPRI, Joy was a research assistant at Taipei Forum Foundation, where she worked for 10 years. She also has experience organizing conferences in Taiwan.
Joy is also a PhD student in the Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies at National Chengchi University. Her dissertation discusses the logic of China’s setting of special envoys and the difference in use of special envoys between China and the west. She received her M.A. from the Graduate Institute of American Studies at Tamkang University. Her research interests include China’s foreign policy, US-China-Taiwan relations, cross-Strait relations, and China’s rare earth policy.
Sylvia Chen is CAPRI’s graphic and website designer. She designed, built, and maintains CAPRI’s website, and she handles the graphic design of CAPRI’s research products and communications material, both digital and printed.
She also designed the website of the Asia-Pacific Hub, one of CAPRI’s pilot programs. In addition, she was previously a full-time staff member at Fulbright Taiwan (Foundation for Scholarly Exchange), where she was in charge of graphic, website, and layout design.
Sylvia graduated from National Chengchi University (NCCU) in 2020 with a bachelor’s degree in advertising. She majored in advertising, digital marketing, and branding and has specializations in English, Japanese, graphic design, and illustration.
Charles Lewis joined CAPRI in January 2023 as part of Northeastern University’s co-op program. He is a third-year student at Northeastern majoring in Political Science and International Affairs and minoring in Chinese. He previously worked for the nonprofit organization WorldBoston, where he served as a coordinator for International Visitor Leadership Program groups visiting Boston. His research interests are in US-China-Taiwan relations and the impact of citizen diplomacy. Charles hails from Maryland but is currently living in Taipei.
Trisha Lim joined CAPRI in February 2023 as part of National Taiwan University’s internship program between the Office of International Affairs and NGOs based in Taiwan. She is a current Masters student studying Biodiversity Conservation at National Taiwan University, with a particular interest in carbon policies and emission reporting.
Prior to moving to Taiwan, she obtained a Law degree from the University of Nottingham in the UK and worked as a compliance and operational risk adviser at Standard Chartered Bank Brunei. Her volunteer work over the years has been in the environmental sphere in promoting food self-sufficiency and reducing carbon footprint from imported produce. Her interdisciplinary background has motivated her to pursue further education in creating a more sustainable and resilient future.
Our team spans the globe, bringing together diverse experiences, ideas, and perspectives.
Alistair Lang joined CAPRI in December 2022. He has a bachelor’s degree in history from University College London and a master’s in global governance and emerging markets from Birkbeck College. His research has included the economic and political changes in Indonesia and Mexico since the 1980’s and the role of foreign policy in Russian domestic politics.
Alistair has a background in finance, public policy, and communications. Before joining CAPRI, Alistair cofounded and managed the Reform for Resilience Commission, which was set up to address the need for more resilient and sustainable health and economic policy, as highlighted by the pandemic.
Currently based in Manchester, he is from the United Kingdom but has traveled extensively in the Asia-Pacific region and looks forward to seeing even more.
Yuxing Liang is a PhD student at the University of Virginia and has been contributing to CAPRI’s work since 2023. Her research interests lie in domestic politics of foreign policy (both foreign policies at a strategic level and specific decisions in face of certain incidents), identifying a range of critical players involved and seeing how their interactions shape diplomatic decisions. Her research also weaves the implications of ongoing domestic transformations into the policy-making process, in the end identifying the relevance between domestic variables (regime type, political system, domestic landscape of political power) and the foreign policy-making patterns of major powers.
Jacob Libby is a recent graduate from a two-year master’s program at the Yenching Academy of Peking University, where his research focused on the geopolitics of the US-China-Taiwan semiconductor trade and the broader challenges associated with export controls, foreign direct investment, and industrial policy in the region. Previously, Jacob completed his undergraduate degree in foreign affairs and Spanish at the University of Virginia. He has worked at the US Department of State, the Carnegie-Tsinghua Center, SupChina, and the Miller Center at UVA, conducting research on contemporary US-China relations and East Asian politics and economics.
He is deeply interested in the growth of East Asia’s technology sphere and plans to dedicate his career to fostering positive, productive relations between the US and East Asia toward a prosperous and innovative future in the face of collective challenges such as climate change and democratic erosion. He is currently pursuing a law degree at Harvard Law School in furtherance of that goal.
Mithra Dhinakaran has joined CAPRI for the fall 2022 semester. She is currently a senior at the University of Virginia double majoring in Economics and Global Studies Security & Justice. This Fall, she is studying Mandarin at National Chengchi University’s Chinese Language Center in Taipei. Mithra’s current research focus is US-China relations, but she has completed projects on topics ranging from rebel militant conflicts to policing data availability. She has previously worked as an Executive Education intern at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and an event coordinator at UVA’s Economics Career Office (ECO). Mithra is a native of Virginia and will be based in the DC area starting from January 2023.
Oliver Jongue joined CAPRI as an intern over his summer break in 2022. He is a second-year student at the Australian National University (ANU), double majoring in Law and International Relations. Oliver’s current research interest is in US-China relations and the international political economy. However, he has completed projects on various topics, including law reform and human rights to global security. He has previously worked as a law ambassador for the ANU College of Law, spearheading the college’s marketing and on the executive of the ANU Society for the United Nations as the conference director, which promotes the discussion of global issues by organizing events such as Model United Nations Conferences. Oliver is a native of Taipei but is currently residing in Canberra.
Senior Fellows contribute their expertise to CAPRI’s collaborative, cross-sector research. In a network of research talent that spans the Asia Pacific, CAPRI research fellows are a key driver of our mission to enhance resilience and promote innovative policy through comparative research.
Kuei-Tien Chou is a professor in the Graduate Institute of National Development, National Taiwan University (NTU). He recently contributed to the books Sociology of Climate Change – High Carbon Society and its Transformation Challenge (National Taiwan University Press, 2017), Energy Transition in East Asia – A Social Scientific Perspective (Routledge, 2018), Climate Change Governance in Asia (Routledge, 2020), and Air Pollution Governance in East Asia (Routledge 2022).
Currently, Dr. Chou is director of the Risk Society and Policy Research Center, NTU, where he constructs a risk communicative platform between politicians, industry, civil society and media in terms of the radical societal transition in Taiwan and in East Asia. He leads young researchers in RSPRC to engage in advocacy for sustainable transitions and published several journal articles, edited books, and policy papers discussing the new paradigm of transboundary risk governance. His research interests include risk governance, sustainable development, globalization, technological democracy, risk communication, and East Asia Risk Society. Recently, he has dedicated himself to the issues of pandemics and climate change governance to reflect sustainability and cosmopolitan governance challenges.
Dr. Minah Kang is professor at the Department of Public Administration at Ewha Womans University in Seoul, Korea. Until recently, she served the Korean government as the first female Commissioner of the Board of Audit and Inspection, the Supreme Audit Institution of Korea. She is currently serving as the President of the KAIDEC (Korea Association of International Development and Cooperation). She served as a committee member of various expert advisory committees, including the Presidential Committee on the 4th Industrial Revolution, the Primary Ministers’ Committee for International Development Cooperation (CIDC), and many advisory boards for the Korean government. Since 2018, she is an active member of W20, one of the engagement groups to the G20 focused on gender equity, and in 2022, was co-chair of the Working Group on Health for the W20 G20 Indonesia. Within the education sector, she served as the Dean of the Ewha Career Development Center and the Vice President of Ewha Institute for Leadership Development, which provides assistance and guidance on career development for female college students. She is the recipient of the Best Professor of the Year Award and the Best Researcher Award of the Year at Ewha.
Her research interests include global health and governance, public accountability, M&E for ODA, women empowerment, and audit and evaluation for innovation. She published numerous articles in internationally recognized public policy and health policy journals including New England Journal of Medicine, Health Affairs, Asia Pacific Viewpoint, Medical Care, Health Policy, and JAMA. She is a member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Health Systems & Reform and Associate Editor of BMC Health Services Research. She completed a Ph.D. in Health Policy from Harvard University, Masters of Public Policy from Harvard Kennedy School and BA from Ewha Womans University.
Dr. Khor Swee Kheng is a Malaysian physician specializing in health systems and global health, based in Singapore. He is CEO of Angsana Health (building primary care systems in Southeast Asia), Visiting Assistant Professor at the Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health National University of Singapore, Member of the Health White Paper Advisory Council to the Malaysian Health Ministry, and Co-Chair of a Lancet Commission on Preparedness for Emerging Infectious Diseases. Previously, he held progressively senior practice roles in the Malaysian Health Ministry and AbbVie and academic roles in international think-tanks (Chatham House and United Nations University). In these roles, he was based in Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, Dubai, Shanghai, Paris, Oxford and Hong Kong, covering >90 countries in Asia, Africa, Europe and the Middle East. He holds three postgraduate degrees, in internal medicine (Royal College of Physicians), public health (Berkeley) and public policy (Oxford), and has published >190 articles in international academic journals, think-tanks and media.
Dr. Shuhei Nomura, an Associate Professor of Health Policy and Management at Keio University School of Medicine, actively contributes to the Global Burden of Diseases Study (GBD) and the Global Nutrition Report (GNR). He serves on the GBD’s Scientific Council, the GNR’s Independent Expert Group, and was a member of the G7 Global Health Task Force for the 2023 G7 Summit, which took place in Japan. In addition, he offers consulting services to the Japan Office of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, SEEK Development, and the World Health Organization Centre for Health Development.
Dr. Nomura has played a pivotal role in planning COVID-19 countermeasures in Japan, having initiated several projects such as the Excess Deaths Dashboard and the COOPERA Healthcare System. His areas of expertise include biostatistics, global health policy, disaster risk management, among others.
Dr. Yen Pottinger is an infectious disease laboratory expert and public health specialist with over 15 years of experience both domestically and internationally. She currently serves as Senior Technical Advisor for Laboratory Surveillance at ICAP, Columbia University. She focuses on implementing HIV public health programs primarily in Africa, namely point-of-care recency testing in the CDC-funded Tracking with Recency Assays to Control the Epidemic (TRACE) Project. Previously, she was Senior Laboratory Advisor for the Population-based HIV Impact Assessment (PHIA) Project. She also works on improving HIV laboratory systems and diagnostic testing, collaborating with health ministries and other global and local partners in ICAP-supported countries. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Pottinger has provided technical assistance and guidance to CDC and U.S. government entities, ministries of health, and other partners on SARS-CoV-2 diagnostic testing and safety protocols. She is also principal investigator for a CDC-funded project on antimicrobial resistance in Kenya. Over 8 years at CDC, Dr. Pottinger developed, validated, and implemented the limiting antigen avidity assay, which is now the most widely used assay globally for estimating and surveilling HIV incidence. Dr. Pottinger holds a Doctoral degree from the University of California, Davis in Pharmacology and Toxicology. She completed postdoctoral training as an ORISE fellow at CDC Atlanta.
Dr. Feng-jen (Jean) Tsai is the Director and a professor of the Global Health and Health Security program, Taipei Medical University. She is also an adjunct professor of the Graduate Institute of Health and Biotechnology Law at Taipei Medical University.
Her research specializations are in the fields of global health policy and law, infectious disease control, health system strengthening, trade and health, and occupational health. As a scholar trained both in law and public health, Jean applies both quantitative and qualitative approaches to answer questions in global health. Prior to entering academia, Jean worked as a lawyer in Taiwan.
Sir Collin Fonotau Tukuitonga KNZM is a Niuean-born New Zealand doctor, public health academic, public policy expert and advocate for reducing health inequalities of Māori and Pasifika people. He has held several positions in public health and government in New Zealand and internationally.
He was appointed a Knight Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit, for services to Pacific and public health, in 2022.
Sir Collin has held several highly influential offices, including Director General of the Pacific Community (SPC), Commissioner and Co-ordinator for WHO Geneva, Chief Executive of the Ministry of Pacific Island Affairs and Director of Public Health, Ministry of Health. He was also instrumental in establishing Pacific Language weeks as an Aotearoa New Zealand government initiative, and in his home of Niue, he established the biannual Niue Culture and Arts Festival.
Sir Collin is one of our most prominent Pacific figures in the health sector in Aotearoa and globally. His voice was crucial in advocating for Pasifika during the Covid crisis in Aotearoa, and he has been consistently vocal in pointing to inequities for Pasifika in the health system and pushing for policy to impact Pasifika in better ways.
His current positions at the University of Auckland are Associate Dean Pacific, Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences Administration; Associate Professor, Population Health; and Director – University Research, Centre for Pacific and Global Health.
