A four-student team from Le Hong Phong High School for the Gifted in Nam Dinh Province, northern Vietnam bagged a gold medal for their study at the 2023 World Invention Creativity Olympics (WICO) recently held in South Korea.

These students, including Vu Duc Manh, Nguyen Trong Phuc, Tran Phuong Linh, and Hoang Mai Phuc Thinh, won the gold medal for their research entitled ‘Protective Effects of Melanin Nanoparticles Created from Squid Ink against X-Rays on Human Dermal Fibroblasts’ at the 12th WICO held in Seoul from February 3 to 4, the school representative told Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper on Monday. 

Manh, Phuc, and Linh are 12th graders specializing in biology while Thinh is a 11th-grade major in English.

They have conducted the study under the guidance of Dr. Tran Thi Thanh Xuan, head of the biology and technology teaching team at the school.

This is the seventh time that Vietnamese students have attended WICO, an annual event organized by the Korea University Invention Association and sponsored by the South Korean Parliament.

The contest is aimed at developing scientific aptitude and promoting interest in science and technology among high school students around the world.

WICO attracts nearly 1,000 contestants annually in different fields of science and technology from dozens of countries around the world, including the U.S., Australia, Canada, and Singapore, among others.

At WICO, candidates must present their research topics in front of an international judge panel, ensuring their studies are novel, creative, and highly applicable. 

At the same time, they must be capable of answering all questions from the panel.

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Vietnam’s EdTech (Education Technology) has grown fast, especially after the COVID-19 pandemic. The sector is expected to develop further this year if it can overcome the challenges in the post-pandemic period.

In Vietnam, Galaxy Education is one of the largest and most well-known EdTech firms.

Offering online learning courses on the HOCMAI (Study Forever) for 15 years, Galaxy Education has pioneered courses for learners at all ages.

The firm currently has over seven million trainees and 600,000 online lectures under many forms, such as asynchonorous learning, synchonorous learning, and hybrid learning.

Pham Giang Linh, CEO of Galaxy Education, told Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper that the EdTech market in Vietnam was formed in 2006-07, or the first stage of the Internet economy in the Southeast Asian country.

However, since 2016, especially in 2020-21, online teaching and learning demands have increased due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the local EdTech sector has been thriving.

Linh added that the prospect of Vietnam’s EdTech is bright. In 2022, Vietnam had more than 100 new EdTech firms and attracted a huge foreign investment in the sector.

Some EdTech companies, such as Topica, ELSA, CoderSchool, Edmicro, Vuihoc, and Educa, have mobilized investments totaling millions to tens of millions of U.S. dollars.

Domestic groups, including Viettel, FPT, and VNPT, have also invested in and expanded their online education ecosystems.

At EDUtech Asia, Asia’s largest conference and exhibition for educators and EdTech providers held in Singapore in November last year, experts assessed that Vietnam’s EdTech market, besides its potential, benefited from external factors in 2021 and 2022. 

In particular, in July 2021, China issued regulations hindering foreign investment in education, forcing many EdTech firms to withdraw from this market.

Meanwhile, EdTech companies in India have been stagnant so they have found it hard to seek new capital resources, according to data from Fintrackr, a media platform for entrepreneurs, startups, and technology enthusiasts.

In 2022, only five Indian EdTech firms successfully called for large investments.

In this context, international experts at EDUtech Asia said large EdTech firms are seeking a new environment in Southeast Asia, including Vietnam. The trend will go on in the coming time.

The Vietnamese EdTech market will likely generate revenue of some US$3 billion this year.

The country’s EdTech annual growth has reached 20.2 percent in 2019-23.

Ho Chi Minh City: A bright spot

Huynh Kim Tuoc, director of the Saigon Innovation Hub under the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Science and Technology, said technological startups have paid a lot of attention to data on the digital market.

In Vietnam, the number of residents owning mobile devices and using the Internet is always high compared with that in other Southeast Asian countries.

In Ho Chi Minh City, some 80-85 percent of residents accessed the Internet in 2021. In addition, the proportion of adults using smartphones in the city reached 75.7 percent, among the leading localities in Vietnam.

According to Truong Le Quynh Tuong, director of Southeast Asia at ClassIn, an EdTech company, the EdTech market in Ho Chi Minh has been attractive to investors over the past few years as local residents are willing to spend on education.

The number of parents with wide knowledge of technology in the city is higher than that in other parts of the country. They are open to new technologies and spend big on their children’s education.

Tuong said in 2023, the EdTech market in Ho Chi Minh City and Vietnam as a whole will continue thriving as EdTech giants have regarded it as a potential market.

Many EdTech firms from Singapore, Thailand, China, India, and the U.S. have worked out plans to invest in Vietnam.

“A positive signal is that technology has become indispensable to teaching and learning activities in Vietnam after the COVID-19 pandemic. Many teachers have still prepared e-lectures and given assignments to students online.

“In Ho Chi Minh City, the municipal Department of Education and Training has set a target that digital learning activities must account for 35 percent, thus maintaining the habit of applying technology to education,” Tuong added.

The 2021 Vietnam EdTech report revealed that Vietnam achieved an EdTech growth rate of 44.3 percent, ranking among the top 10 countries with the fastest expansion in the world.

Meanwhile, a report by Ken Research, a market research and consulting firm, showed that Vietnam’s EdTech market scale will reach $3 billion this year. 

Director of the Saigon Innovation Hub Tuoc said the future of the EdTech sector will be driven by the state.

Education management agencies should seek and apply effective EdTech products, considering it the digital transformation in education.

Moreover, EdTech firms should cooperate to come up with multi-functional projects and products, Tuoc added.

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Pham Tuan Huy has become the second Vietnamese mathematician after famed Professor Ngo Bao Chau to receive a research fellowship from the Clay Mathematics Institute.

The Clay Mathematics Institute officially announced two mathematicians who will be awarded research fellowships in 2023, including Paul Minter, who obtained his PhD in 2022 at the University of Cambridge, and Pham Tuan Huy, who is about to receive his PhD from Stanford University.

Both Minter and Huy will be Clay Research Fellows starting July 1.

The appointment term of Minter is four years while Huy’s is five years.

On the website of the Clay Mathematics Institute, Huy is introduced as a highly inventive and prolific researcher who has already made fundamental contributions to combinatorics, probability, number theory, and theoretical computer science.

The 27-year-old is the second Vietnamese mathematician to receive a research fellowship from the Clay Mathematics Institute after famed Professor Ngo Bao Chau in 2004.

On August 19, 2010, Prof. Chau became the first Vietnamese ever to win the Fields Medal, the world’s most prestigious award in mathematics. 

Huy previously won the gold medals at the International Mathematics Olympiad (IMO) twice in 2013 and 2014.

“We are very happy because Huy’s dream has come true,” Pham Chau Tuan, Huy’s father, told Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper.

“I hope this achievement will inspire and motivate the passion for mathematics among high school students in Vietnam.”

The Clay Mathematical Institute is a well-known private American foundation established in 1998 to honor mathematical talents and to fund people with the potential to become the world’s top mathematicians.

The Clay Research Fellowships are awarded to about two to three mathematicians each year.

Candidates for the fellowships are those who have recently received their PhD or have completed their thesis and are about to obtain the degree.

Each fellowship typically lasts a maximum of five years, depending on when the candidate’s PhD was obtained.

The main selection criteria for the fellowship is the exceptional quality of the candidate’s research and the promise to become a leading mathematician in their field.

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