Congratulations to Hung-Jui Lin (林宏叡) for winning the Student Paper Outstanding Award at the 2026 CGS Annual Conference (中華民國地理學會)

Congratulations to Hung-Jui Lin (林宏叡) for winning the Student Paper Competition Outstanding Award (學生論文競賽特優獎) at the 2026 Annual Conference of the Geography Society of China Located in Taipei (2026年中華民國地理學會年會暨學術研討會).

His awarded paper is titled: Polycentric Governance in Global SDG Partnerships: Evidence from Network Analysis (多中心治理視角下的全球永續發展夥伴關係形成機制：基於網絡分析的實證研究). The study analyzes 1,754 SDG partnership initiatives spanning 187 countries (2000–2025) using Multivariate Regression Quadratic Assignment Procedure (MRQAP) to uncover the structural logics behind global partnership formation. It identifies three distinct mechanisms — capability clustering among Northern partners, geographic regionalism among Southern partners, and asymmetric bridging in North–South collaboration — with notable variation across SDG thematic categories. These findings challenge the assumption of a single universal cooperation mechanism and demonstrate that the global SDG partnership system exhibits polycentric governance driven by heterogeneous, often competing logics.

We are incredibly proud of Hung-Jui's outstanding achievement!

The annual conference of the Geography Society of China (Taipei) is Taiwan's principal gathering of the geography community, bringing together researchers across human geography, spatial analysis, and sustainability science — which makes a student-paper Outstanding Award there a genuinely competitive distinction.

Hung-Jui's work also reflects the widening lens of the E3 Center: alongside the lab's core research on energy systems and transportation, understanding who partners with whom — and why — in global sustainability governance is essential to turning engineering solutions into implemented ones. We are excited to see network-analytical methods take their place in the lab's toolbox.