Dr. Chun-Hong Kuo, the Assistant Research Fellow in the Institute of Chemistry, received the “2018 Excellent Young Chemist Award” from the Chinese Chemical Society (CCS) in Taipei, owing to his outstanding research in the development of metallic heterogeneous catalysts, metal-based optical sensors, and organic-metallic hybrid nanomaterials. The award is established to recognize the CCS members under 42 years old with great research achievements and contributions. Dr. Kuo and his co-workers have developed unique techniques to achieve atom-level modulation of nanostructures that leads to superior performances in optical sensing and catalysis. Their important findings include utilization of an ionic switch for precise control of nanocatalysts in an aqueous synthesis, which led to the synthesis of two nanocatalysts in the same composition but very distinct structures that induces very different performances in photocatalysis. Besides, they built the system of nanoplasmonic sensing for in-situ detection of flowing molecules based on the home-made nanostructures, which accomplished the temporal measurements in high sensitivity. These concept have been further applied to preparation of Cu-based bimetallic nanocatalysts used for CO2 reduction.