VinFuture Science and Technology Week 2025: Gathering world-renowned scientists

The week includes 7 main activities: Inspirational speeches, Science for Life Seminar; VinFuture Future Discovery Dialogue series; The Touch of Science exhibition, VinFuture Award Ceremony; Exchange with the 2025 VinFuture Award winners and VinUni - Leadership Forum: Conference on innovation in higher education .

The highlight of the event is the VinFuture 2025 Awards Ceremony, taking place on the evening of December 5 at the Hoan Kiem Theater (Hanoi). This is an event to honor outstanding scientific works that have had a positive and sustainable impact on millions, even billions of people around the world. This year, the Awards will be presented to works that bring the value of "Together Rising - Together Prosperity" to humanity, as the theme has set out, affirming VinFuture's mission of honoring intelligence, spreading humanity and serving life.

With the theme "Growing Together - Prospering Together", the VinFuture 2025 Awards Ceremony will take place on the evening of December 5 at the Hoan Kiem Theater, Hanoi . PHOTO: VFP

The remaining six activities revolve around the Awards Ceremony - starting with the "Inspiring Speech: Disruptive Technology of the Future" program on the morning of December 2. This is where leading scientists and experts share their vision of technology trends that could shape the world in the coming decades with visual technology presentations and demonstrations.

Next is the series of Science for Life Seminars taking place consecutively on December 2-4, including 5 in-depth discussion sessions with urgent topics of the time: "AI for humanity - Ethics and AI safety in the new era"; "Advances in disease detection and treatment"; "Innovation in agriculture and food"; "Robots and intelligent automation"; and "Science and innovation for a sustainable future" with the participation of the world's leading experts.

In particular, the icons of the AI and Internet era, Professor Geoffrey Hinton and Professor Yoshua Bengio (VinFuture 2024 Grand Prize) and Dr. Vinton Cerf (VinFuture 2022 Grand Prize) will also send profound messages to the discussion about the role of science in the journey of serving humanity.

Next is the VinFuture Future Discovery Dialogue series of events, expanding to 10 institutes and universities nationwide, providing opportunities to meet, dialogue and be inspired directly by world-class scientists for tens of thousands of students, lecturers and researchers across the country.

Immediately following the Award Ceremony is the event "Hello Future: Exchange with the VinFuture 2025 Award Winners", taking place all day on December 6 at VinUni University. The award winners will spend the morning sharing their knowledge, experience and inspirational stories in their research journey with the scientific community and the Vietnamese public; the afternoon will feature in-depth presentations in each field for young scientists and businesses interested in applying research results into practice.

After 5 seasons, the VinFuture Prize has attracted 6,132 nominations from nearly 110 countries around the world. PHOTO: VFP

Also on December 6, VinUni will organize the event "VinUni - Leadership Forum: Conference on Higher Education Innovation", bringing together domestic and foreign education leaders to discuss the future of teaching and learning as well as the pioneering role of Vietnamese universities in the era of innovation.

In addition to academic scientific activities, a notable highlight is the Exhibition "The Foliage V - The Touch of Science" | "The Foliage V - The Touch of Science", marking the first collaboration between two non-profit organizations, the VinFuture Foundation and the Vincom Center for Contemporary Art (VCCA). The exhibition aims to honor the discoveries, materials and advanced scientific achievements that go hand in hand with the history of sustainable human development through large-scale works of art invested in and executed by prominent Vietnamese artists. Taking place from December 2 to February 28, 2026, the exhibition opens a journey to connect the public with science through artistic touches and rich multi-sensory experiences.

From an initiative originating in Vietnam, up to 2025, with 5 seasons of VinFuture, a total of 20 awards have been given to 20 works by 48 scientists from 5 continents around the world. The award-winning works have all made great contributions to the development of humanity. In particular, many scientists who have been awarded the VinFuture Prize have continued to be honored with many other prestigious awards such as the Nobel Prize, the Queen Elizabeth Award for Engineering, the Breakthrough Award, etc., demonstrating VinFuture's pioneering spirit and vision of the times.

Some typical scientists participating in the Science for Life Seminar on December 2-4:

Professor Toby Walsh, Scientia Professor of Artificial Intelligence and Scientific Director at the AI Institute at the University of New South Wales (Australia); Associate Professor César de la Fuente, expert in Machine Biology at the University of Pennsylvania (USA); Professor Ho-Young Kim, world-leading expert in fluid mechanics and soft materials from Seoul National University (Korea); Professor Kurt Kremer - Honorary Director at the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research (Germany), Academician of the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina; Professor Aldo Steinfeld from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich), winner of the SolarPACES Lifetime Achievement Award of the International Energy Agency 2024; Professor Chuanbin Mao from the Chinese University of Hong Kong (China), top 2% of the world's most cited scientists in the field of biomedical engineering; Professor Raphaël Mercier, Director of the Department of Chromosome Biology at the Max Planck Institute for Plant Genetics (Germany)...