The 2011 Vietnamese Talent Awards ceremony was held on November 20 at the Friendship Cultural Palace in Hanoi to honour the best products and initiatives in the fields of information technology (IT), natural sciences and physiology.
The ceremony was attended by former General Secretary Le Kha Phieu, Vice President Nguyen Thi Doan and Minister of Information and Communications Nguyen Bac Son.

The natural science award was presented to Professors Tran Duc Thiep and Nguyen Van Do from the Institute of Physics for their research on nuclear structures and reactions.

In physiology, two groups of medical scientists from Viet Duc Hospital in Hanoi and Hue Central Hospital won awards for their research on transplanting organs from brain-dead organ donors.

In the IT category, the largest category with 204 products, no first prize was awarded but one second and five third prizes were presented.

The IT second prize went to the Semantic Innovation Group for its iCompanion application, a semantic-based service that provides useful information for visitors to a new destination.

This year, the first prize recipients won VND100 million (US$4,800) while second and third prize winners received VND50 million (US$2,400) and VND30 million (US$1,440), respectively.

The 2011 Vietnamese Talent Awards (VTAs) were co-organised by the Ministries of Information and Communication; Science and Technology; Education and Training; and Health, along with the Institute of Science and Technology.

The annual VTAs were first held in 2005 and were originally designed to encourage and acknowledge Vietnamese talent in the IT industry. The awards were later expanded to include natural sciences and physiology in 2009.

Nhan Dan