Truong Van Tien

Tien followed his grandfather and father’s example to become a technology school student, majoring in aviation engineering. After graduation in 2008, he obtained a full scholarship to study for a doctorate in aviation engineering and information at KonKuk University in South Korea.

During his study, Tien worked on the Brain Machine Interface project co-funded by the US Department of Defense and South Korean Ministry of Natural Defense.

To implement the project, he managed to connect professors in the US and flew to the US to conduct research. Under the initial plan, he would have one year of working at Washington State University and University of Montana to carry out the first phase of the project. However, it took Tien only four months to fulfill the workload amid the surprise of professors.

Difficulties came in 2011 when Tien’s advising professor unexpectedly changed his work. Discovering this information, the professors from Drexel University, Washington State University and Brown University agreed to grant a scholarship to Tien, so that he could go to the US to continue his doctoral study. However, Tien turned down the invitation and stayed in South Korea to fulfill the study with the advice of South Korean professors and a professor from the US.

Asked about the decision, Tien said the professor who advised him is a good teacher with great ambition. Just after 10 years, he added his business to the list of top 100 startups in South Korea. It was his ambition that gave Tien momentum to help him finish the program.

After obtaining a doctorate in South Korea in 2013, Tien received an invitation to work in France and Singapore and he chose NUS in Singapore, where he conducted research to serve national defense projects of the country.

Four years later, Tien decided to move to Queen University in Canada at the invitation of two leading professors at the school.

“I decided to move Queen University to work on projects with publications in prestigious journals about the application of laser technique in medical research, and I expected to become a professor at the school,” he said.

There was another reason behind his choice: the school was the choice of Elon Musk and Professor Arthur B. McDonald, who won the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physics for discovering the oscillations of neutrinos.

During his stay in Canada, Tien received an invitation from DTU Wind Energy at the Technical University of Denmark, one of the leading universities in Europe.

I can easily settle down and have a scientific career in the US, Canada, a good workplace in Denmark, Sweden, Singapore or South Korea. But these locations are not my homeland,”  Truong Van Tien

Tien, who has lived and worked in many countries, said the offer from Denmark was the most valuable one in his career.

Nowhere else better than homeland

Demark is often rated among the happiest and most livable countries in the world. Together with offers for cooperation, there were also good offers for his family. However, at that time, he began thinking of returning to Vietnam.

Finally, he decided to go to Singapore as a transitional step before returning to Vietnam. He worked as a senior expert at SUTD-MIT, the center established thanks to the cooperation of Singapore University of Technology and Design and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

From Singapore, he could fly to Vietnam several times a month. With these trips, his career orientation changed with a focus on projects which could be applied in production.

A research project in 2020 on 3D printing design technology by Truong Van Tien and his coworkers won the special "Innovation prize 2021" for soft robot manufacturing technology with 3D printing in the Purmundus Challenge competition, the top award in the world for 3D and 4D printing designing technology.

Anh Tien and his colleagues have researched a method to make soft robots with 3D printing. He published the research in the leading journal ''Advanced Material Technologies'' in the August 2021 issue. Their method of creating soft robots with 3D printing was published in Advanced Material Technologies in August 2021.

Tien’s recent research focuses on advanced materials, robotics, additive manufacturing technology, soft robot and AI applications. The research has been used in industrial production and published in leading journals such as Material Horizons, Advanced Material Technologies, Structural and Multidisciplinary Optimization.

His most recent research is about the use of AI to create advanced materials to make sensors for soft robots. It has been published in Nature Machine Intelligence.

In late 2020, Tien decided to return to Vietnam. He made his decision after talking with a leading expert in optics manufacturing in Vietnam.

“He told me that with just enthusiasm, everything can be done with Vietnamese intelligence. The saying prompted me to return to Vietnam sooner than initially planned,” Tien said.

The scientist who spent 12 years living overseas now says there is nothing else more wonderful than living in your home country.

“I can easily settle down and have a scientific career in the US, Canada, a good workplace in Denmark, Sweden, Singapore or South Korea. But these locations are not my homeland,” he said. 

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“I chose to stay in the UK, not because I can find a good job here, but I believe that I still need more time to accumulate experience and money before I return to Vietnam and do something bigger,” said Trinh Quang Vu.