In 2024, at the "Golden Globe" science and technology awards ceremony, the name Nguyen Van Son resounded in the solemn auditorium amid long applause.
It is not only an honor, but also a recognition for a journey of tireless pursuit of knowledge and dedication to the country.
At the age of 31, Dr. Nguyen Van Son, a lecturer at the Faculty of Information Technology, University of Technology (VNU Hanoi ) has owned an exclusive patent. He and his research team have also published more than 10 international publications, including 7 scientific articles published in the most prestigious international scientific journals today, in the Q1 category, and 9 articles published in international scientific conferences Q1 (ranked A*/A).
Dr. Son and his teammates are also the "fathers" of many highly applicable technology products, gradually contributing to "Vietnamizing" digital solutions to serve the community.
Few people know that behind the impressive numbers, there was once a first-year student who was shocked by his semester final grade of C+ (Average).
Dr. Nguyen Van Son’s current achievements do not come from a pre-planned plan, but from unexpected turns. For him, the research path is the result of many opportunities, a journey that begins from a failure.
As a 9X generation IT student, Dr. Son is not outside the wave of excitement for emerging applied technologies. He admits that he was a bit off track in his studies in class, rushing to learn new applied technologies while neglecting the basic subjects in the classroom.
That imbalance has led to a certain gap in knowledge, and the price to pay has been an unforgettable result.
“In the second semester of my first year, I got a very low final score, only 2.9,” he frankly shared.
The number 2.9 is not just a score, it is a shock that forces the young student to stop and face the big question: "Am I on the right track or just following the trend?".
It was a valuable moment of self-reflection. He decided to put aside his outside projects, return to the cycle of studying, focus on filling in the gaps in his knowledge and understanding things more deeply.
It was during this seemingly obscure period that another smoldering fire began to flare up.
He no longer feels interested in repetitive, predictable products. “I find it boring,” Dr. Son said.
Instead, the young man was attracted by open questions, difficult unsolved problems where thinking had to really work. And it was that desire that led him to step into the path of scientific research. Where challenges were no longer barriers, but became motivations.
The opportunity came when a friend invited him to join the research group of Associate Professor Dr. Vo Dinh Hieu and Associate Professor Dr. Pham Bao Son.
The goal was a system to detect plagiarism and spelling errors in academic texts - a precursor to the later DoiT tool.
DoiT (Documentation improvement Tool) is an important tool in the field of education and research. Its main goals are to check for plagiarism, check for copyright infringement, support essay writing and prevent plagiarism in research papers and theses.
“As soon as I was introduced to the project’s objectives, I was really impressed. It was a very humane idea to improve the quality of academic documents such as theses and dissertations, making them cleaner, both in form and content,” Dr. Son recalled.
From a young person passionate about technology, Dr. Son entered the project with a completely new mindset: Not to prove his ability, but to create something useful.
However, reality is never easy. At that time, Vietnamese data warehouses were scattered, and support tools were almost non-existent. To move forward, they had to become “pioneers” in their mother tongue.
Every line of code, every algorithm, every test had to be rewritten, tweaked, and built from scratch by hand.
“The biggest challenge was turning research results into truly useful products,” Dr. Son recalled.
When DoiT was officially launched, it was not simply a plagiarism checking software. DoiT could read Vietnamese text, understand the structure, style, and academic nuances, which many international software at that time still left out.
“Making products for Vietnamese people is not just about 'translating' ideas from abroad, but also about understanding how we write, think, and learn,” Dr. Son analyzed.
This system was quickly deployed at Hanoi National University and a number of educational institutions across the country, contributing to improving the quality of scientific documents. This product also received the Second Prize at the “Vietnamese Talents” Award Ceremony during the time Dr. Son was studying in the US.
In 2017, Nguyen Van Son won a full scholarship to pursue a doctoral program at the University of Texas (Dallas, USA). The journey to one of the world's leading research centers opened the door to vast knowledge but also brought with it pressure and challenges on a completely different level.
“It is an environment where quality is not just a requirement, but a survival standard,” Son shared.
The first and biggest challenge is not the amount of knowledge to be absorbed, but the transformation in research thinking.
From a member of the DoiT project guided step by step by the teacher, he was now forced to become a self-pilot. Finding his own topics, designing his own experiments, solving his own problems and taking responsibility for all results.
But the difficulties do not only come from academics. The loneliness in a foreign land in a strange culture, the relationships that must be rebuilt from scratch are also a simmering but no less harsh challenge.
“Moving to a completely new environment, surrounded by strangers… the feeling of being far from home, lacking spiritual support, was a huge challenge that I had to overcome,” he confided.
There are times, especially in the first 2-3 years, when all efforts seem hopeless. Research papers submitted are repeatedly rejected.
“There were times when I doubted my own abilities,” Dr. Son confided. Those were long nights of restlessness and a feeling of utter failure.
But it was in the darkness of doubt that Nguyen Van Son learned a valuable lesson: Get used to failure.
The failures were no longer the end, but became the lever that helped him sharpen his research projects day by day.
That motivation is fueled by the quiet but persistent support of family, friends, and especially dedicated teachers in America.
And also during those quiet years, a big decision was gradually formed: to return.
As early as 2019, when his research career in the US was just beginning to flourish, Son began to think about returning to Vietnam with the belief that in Vietnam there would be many opportunities to create useful products, contributing to the origin.
Becoming a teacher, a leader for the next generation is the way Dr. Nguyen Van Son chooses to spread the values he has received.
The decision to return did not come on a whim, but was the result of three years of quiet but careful preparation.
While still in the US, Dr. Son began to reconnect with teachers and colleagues at the University of Technology, gradually building a research group and scientific cooperation network.
He not only brought back knowledge from the West, but also prepared an "ecosystem" for ideas to take root and develop in his homeland.
In 2022, Dr. Nguyen Van Son officially returned to his homeland. Along with the prestigious degree is an aspiration to use knowledge to sow the seeds for a renewed Vietnam.
Returning to his homeland after many years of studying in the US and starting work at the University of Technology, the young doctor could not avoid difficulties in the beginning.
He confessed: “It took me a relatively long time to get used to the pace of life, the way of working and even the things that seemed familiar but had become different.”
During that silence, he received help and encouragement from his colleagues. Along with that, the open and free research environment at the University of Technology helped Dr. Son quickly integrate.
In just two short years after returning to Vietnam, he and his research team quickly achieved many impressive results.
As of 2024, the group has had 9 scientific articles published in the most prestigious international scientific journals/conferences in the Q1 or A* category. The group's research has been published in the IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering journal, one of the leading journals in the field of software engineering.
An important “sweet fruit” marking the return of Dr. Nguyen Van Son is the CodeJIT project - a system that helps detect security vulnerabilities early in the software development stage, with an impressive accuracy of up to 90% and is considered a solid “shield” for Vietnamese software products, promising potential for the field of network security.
“This is a project I am especially proud of,” Dr. Son shared.
The young scientist also emphasized that this project has laid the foundation for many recent studies related to exploiting the endogenous potential of artificial intelligence models, helping to develop software in an environment where there is collaboration between machine learning, deep learning, large language models (LLM) and programming to become safer, preventing bad situations before they cause unfortunate consequences.
Dr. Son's contributions and persistent efforts in research are recognized through the 2024 "Golden Globe" award. A prestigious award for outstanding young talents in the field of Science and Technology.
The name “Nguyen Van Son” was announced at the award ceremony, becoming one of 10 individuals honored in the field of information technology, digital transformation and automation.
As a student who received help, encouragement, and passion from respected teachers such as Associate Professor Dr. Vo Dinh Hieu, Associate Professor Dr. Pham Ngoc Hung, and Associate Professor Dr. Pham Bao Son, Dr. Son understood the value of being guided by the previous generation and decided to become a lecturer to do the same for the next generation.
“I want to become a lecturer to help young people, especially to help them develop their abilities, become the best version of themselves and create many support solutions for the community,” Dr. Son hopes.
Now, returning to the lecture hall where he started, Dr. Son is not only a passionate researcher but also a dedicated teacher, carrying with him a wealth of knowledge and valuable experience to pass on to today's generation of students.
From his own experiences, he sends profound advice to the young generation who are nurturing scientific dreams: “In scientific research, we do not always receive the expected output.
However, when doing research, one type of output that many people often forget is the knowledge they gain during the process of discovery and research.
According to him, research is to create new knowledge, so discovery and experience are extremely valuable, even if you fail, it will lay the foundation for future times.
In the near future, young scientist Nguyen Van Son said he will continue to pursue research and teaching, focusing on research in Automated Software Engineering and Automated AI Engineering with data as the center.
In particular, he said he will continue to work with his colleagues to develop the research group (Intelligent Software Engineering - iSE) and continue to pursue long-term projects, including a project with the mission of "popularizing AI", bringing the benefits of AI to more people in society, especially the disadvantaged.
Source: https://dantri.com.vn/khoa-hoc/cu-soc-c-dua-cau-sinh-vien-viet-den-tam-bang-tien-si-ai-my-20251006174751490.htm
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