VietNamNet Bridge - Many Vietnamese scientists who live and work in the US have gained great scientific achievements and received international honors.

Vu Ha Van, Math Professor at Yale University 

Van’s father is a poet and mother a pharmacist. Van, born in 1970, has been passionate about natural sciences since he was a schoolboy. Later, he came second at the entrance exam to the Hanoi University of Technology and received a scholarship for studying electronics in Hungary. One year later, he shifted to study math and obtained a bachelor’s degree in math in 1994.

Van obtained a doctorate in math from Yale University in 1998. After a period of postdoc studying at Princeton’s IAS (Institute of Advanced Study) and at Microsoft, he worked for the University of California from 2001 to 2005 as assistant professor, associate professor and then full professor.

In 2005, he became a math professor at Rutgers University. Since 2011, he has been working as a professor of the Yale University. He is also a visiting professor at Paris University.

Living in the US, Van keeps his Vietnamese citizenship and often returns to Vietnam, where he teaches math at Hanoi National University.

Luu Le Hang, Astrophysics professor 

Hang, born in 1963, emigrated to the US as a refugee in 1975, when the South Vietnamese government fell. 

In 1992, after many efforts, Hang, together with her colleague and teacher David Jewitt, discovered Kuiper Belt with 70,000 meteorites. This laid a new platform for the explanation and proof of the formation of the solar system.

Thanks to the research on the Kuiper Belt, she and her colleague received the Kavli Reward from Norway, considered the Nobel Prize in astrophysics.

In 2012, Hang received Shaw, considered the Nobel Prize in astronomy.

In 1994, Hang became an astronomy lecturer at Harvard University and has been working at the Lincoln Laboratory belonging to Massachusetts Academy.

Phan Minh Liem, MD, famous for cancer research

The man from Khanh Hoa province, Vietnam, born in 1983, is the first Vietnamese who has been four times honored by Anderson Institute, a leading cancer hospital in the US.

Liem decided to devote himself to the studies about cancer when he was a student of the HCM City University of Natural Sciences. Finishing the school in 2005, Liem obtained a scholarship to study in the US.

The research team led by Liem discovered a gene which can inhibit and exterminate the process of tumor’s energy generation. When this gene is activated, cancer cells will not be able to receive nutrition, or they can get nutrition but cannot convert into energy.