Taipei, June 24 (CNA) A merger proposal by National Yang-Ming University (NYMU) and National Chiao Tung University (NCTU) has gained the approval of the Ministry of Education, NCTU said Wednesday.

Pending Cabinet approval, the two universities will become one institution on Feb. 1, 2021, NCTU said.

The two schools are delighted to have obtained the approval of the education ministry for their merger plan and will work hard to complete the process by next February, NCTU officials told CNA.

Yang-Ming and Chiao Tung are both research universities, with the former specializing in medical science, biotech engineering and life science, and the latter in information and communications technology (ICT), a merger document says.

According to the merger document, they plan to integrate their research resources in areas such as biotech, smart medicine, artificial intelligence, robotics and big data to meet the urgent needs of Taiwan's aging society.

The new school will also work to advance technology development to facilitate interdisciplinary research, in particular in bio-ICT and digital bio-medicine, the document states.

In 2019, NCTU ranked 227th and NYMU 287th in the QS World University Rankings. After the merger, NYCU is expected to rank around 156th globally, according to the document.

The new school will have two campuses - in Taipei and Hsinchu where NYMU and NCTU are currently located, respectively. NYCU will have a student body of about 17,000, a faculty of some 1,400, and a total campus area of 139 hectares, according to NCTU.

It said the MOE will provide about NT$400 million (US$13.5 million) to subsidize the cost of the merger.

The merger was initiated in 2018 after the administrations of Yang-Ming and Chiao Tung approved the proposal, and the two schools signed a memorandum of understanding in March 2019.