VinFuture Prize 2025 Winner: Young People Should Be Resilient With 'Absurd' Ideas

Many winners of the VinFuture 2025 Science and Technology Prize said that every time they have a new research idea, many people will look at it and be skeptical, even judging it as a very unreasonable idea.

Professor Mary-Claire King (USA) - winner of the VinFuture 2025 special prize for female scientists - shared at the exchange - Photo: NGUYEN BAO

Right after the 2025 VinFuture Science and Technology Award ceremony on the evening of December 5, and the morning of December 6, many inspiring stories of pursuing scientific research were shared by the award winners with the young generation and Vietnamese students.

Fail early to succeed quickly

Viet's discovery of the BRCA1 gene that causes breast and ovarian cancer helped Professor Mary-Claire King (USA) win the special VinFuture Prize 2025 for female scientists.

The identification of the BRCA1 gene on chromosome 17q21 in 1990 - before the human genome was decoded - was considered a historic milestone, confirming the genetic nature of cancer risk and changing approaches to prevention and treatment worldwide .

Sharing with young Vietnamese people at the exchange, Professor Mary-Claire King said that she has been doing science for more than 50 years, but when looking back on her journey, she realized that every 10 years there are breakthroughs in science and technology.

According to her, people who do scientific research work very hard, must accept failure and always accept it with the most positive attitude. "The sooner you fail, the faster you can develop and succeed - that is how science chooses the right path," said Professor Mary-Claire King.

"In my research career, every time I have an idea or a research direction, many people will look at it and say it is absurd, very absurd. But then the research is published, there are people who learn from it, and many people then follow it. Those who criticized it quickly come back and say they know the idea will be successful," Professor Mary-Claire King shared, adding that researchers must be steadfast with their ideas to achieve certain results.

Professor Maura L. Gillison at the exchange - Photo: NGUYEN BAO

A group of four American scientists: Dr. Douglas R. Lowy, Dr. John T. Schiller, Dr. Aimée R. Kreimer and Professor Maura L. Gillison - the winners of the VinFuture 2025 main prize for their discoveries and development of the HPV vaccine to prevent tumors caused by the human papilloma virus (HPV) - also shared interesting stories about their journey of pursuing scientific research with young people.

Professor Gillison said that she had always wanted to become a doctor and was a resident physician. But because she wanted to help more people, she pursued clinical research in molecular biology.

No exception, Professor Gillison admitted that her research had also received a lot of skepticism from outsiders, even from colleagues, who thought it was unreasonable research. She said that there was a time when her superiors had to spend half of their salary to share with her to cover living expenses, encouraging her to continue pursuing her research direction.

VinFuture 2025 Prize winners interact with Vietnamese students - Photo: VinUni

Gender stereotypes are barriers to progress

Responding to a female student's question, "Should women pursue scientific research?", Professor Gillison affirmed that women can do any job they want. According to her, gender bias in scientific research and careers is currently only the thoughts of a few individuals.

Similarly, Dr. Aimée R. Kreimer - co-winner of this year's main prize - said that gender bias in scientific research is a dangerous mindset, a barrier to human progress.

Dr. Aimée Kreimer is an infectious disease epidemiologist and a senior investigator in the Intramural Research Program at the National Cancer Institute (NCI), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). She is also a faculty member at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

According to Ms. Kreimer, during her years of scientific research, she did not research independently, but always worked in groups with colleagues, in order to take advantage of the strengths of each scientist in each small problem, so that the research work could go quickly, far and have clear results.

NGUYEN BAO

Source: https://tuoitre.vn/vinfuture-2025-award-recipient-of-young-people-are-resilient-with-unrealistic-ideas-20251206110234112.htm