Illustrative image (Photo: Internet) After three rounds of selection by the scientific council, 360 scholarshipsworth 62 billion VND (2.6 million USD) have been given this year to 150master's students, 150 PhD candidates, and 60 deserving doctorate studentsthroughout 13 different fields of study.
This is the fourth year in a row that Vingroup has awarded domestic master'sand doctoral scholarships and the second year of postdoctoral scholarships tocontribute to the development of high-quality scientific human resources forthe country.
They are all excellent young scientists, with a total of more than 2,600publications in prestigious national and international journals and conferencesand nearly 200 national-level scientific research awards.
Particularly, among them, 24 valedictorians graduated from universities, 13candidates transferred from the bachelor to the doctoral level, and 38 PhDstudents defended their theses abroad.
"Vietnam has the opportunity to participate in thefourth industrial revolution. Integration requires human and knowledgeresources. To do that, we need a solid launch pad for a young research team tofocus on developing the country. And that has been the goal of VINIF inimplementing scholarship programmes over the last four years," Vu Ha Van,Scientific Director of VINIF, stated in his opening remarks.
VINIF has built a VINIF Alumni Club with more than 1,000 young scientists whohave received VINIF scholarships, hoping to contribute to creating a scientificresearch culture with high international standards.
“VINIF is not only a financial support channel for young scientists, but alsocreates a premise to encourage students to do more research,” Van said, addingthat the foundation also hopes to promote an ethical and respectable workingenvironment in science.
At the event, Do Ngoc My, head of Quy Nhon University, said that before 2022,data science and artificial intelligence did not have a major code on the listof the Ministry of Education and Training and only specialised in othersubjects. To open a major, one of the mandatory requirements is to havecoordination and cooperation with businesses. With the cooperation of VINIF,the university opened the Master of Data Science training in 2020, and thesetwo have become two new majors in the list of undergraduate, master's, anddoctoral degrees of the Ministry of Education and Training in July.
"The foundation has supported localities in remote areas to carry out manyprojects," said My.
Nguyen Hoang Hai, Vice President of Vietnam National University, appreciatedthe contribution of VINIF to the development of the scientific industry. Healso recommended that the foundation provide scholarships for undergraduatestudents, promoting the growth of basic scientific subjects like mathematicsand physics and not just data science.
Sharing a similar idea, Ho Tu Bao of the Institute for Advanced Study inMathematics said that the role of data science and artificial intelligence isbecoming more important, but the development of a country is dependent on manyfields. Therefore, the foundation should consider sponsoring other subjectswith fewer students pursuing them now as the basic scientific subjects are abase of science and technology.
After four years of implementation, VINIF has sponsored 1,150 scholarships witha total value of nearly 180 billion VND for excellent masters and PhD students./.
VNA
