📋 Tender Overview
The VinFuture Prize has entered its fourth season with nearly 1,500 nominations from more than 80 countries and territories, and more than 9,000 scientists becoming nominating partners. The number of nominations this year has not only increased but also spread across many different fields, showing the increasingly positive reception of the world's scientific community. This year's VinFuture Week is expected to take place from December 4 to 7, with the award ceremony taking place on December 6 at the Hoan Kiem Opera House (Hanoi).
Promote the resolution of pressing human problems
Commenting on this year's award season, Professor Sir Richard Friend, Chairman of the VinFuture Prize Council, said that it is encouraging that the VinFuture Prize is increasingly receiving positive reception from the world's scientific community.
This year's nominations not only increased in number but also became more diverse, spanning many fields, such as materials science, regenerative medicine, computer science and technology...
This reflects the growing recognition and understanding of the values ??that VinFuture honors: works and inventions that have a real impact on the daily lives of millions of people. The prize is not only awarded to groundbreaking scientific ideas, but also honors works that create significant changes in important areas such as health, sustainable food supply, and climate.
At the same time, the judges are always looking for breakthrough innovations, discoveries that are unknown or not yet widely applied but promise the potential to create positive turning points in the future.
Professor Sir Richard Friend also emphasized the aim of an award that can vividly reflect how scientific and technological advances impact the general global development situation. Therefore, the most important message of VinFuture is global recognition for the awarded works, while at the same time raising everyone's awareness of the common urgent problems that humanity is facing.
Looking back at previous seasons, it can be seen that the nomination was honored because it contributed to solutions to solve global problems, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, or decarbonizing the energy system with battery storage.
Another encouraging thing for Professor Sir Richard Friend is that the public increasingly understands that these issues affect not just individual countries or societies, but the entire world.
Enhancing Vietnam's position on the global science map
According to Professor Sir Richard Friend, VinFuture has contributed to enhancing Vietnam's position on the global science map because Vietnam's reputation and attraction on the global science map are increasingly evident.
In the first season, Dr. Katalin Karikó and Prof. Drew Weissman - two scientists who won the VinFuture Prize for their research that helped develop an mRNA vaccine against Covid-19. Two years after being honored, they continued to be awarded the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
The other two winners of the VinFuture Special Prize Season 2 (2022) are Dr. Demis Hassabis and Dr. John Jumper, who have also won the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
Previously, also this year, the group of authors who were honored with the VinFuture 2023 Special Prize for Scientists researching new fields, namely Prof. Daniel Joshua Drucker (Canada), Prof. Joel Francis Habener (USA), Prof. Jens Juul Holst (Denmark) and Assoc. Prof. Svetlana Mojsov (USA), were respectively honored by Time Magazine in the list of 100 most influential people in the world, and the list of 100 most influential people in the field of health. They also continued to be honored in many other prestigious international awards this year such as the Tang Prize, Lasker Awards, etc.
"They all came to Hanoi and interacted with the Vietnamese scientific community and students. That was truly inspiring, proving that Vietnam is gradually becoming one of the destinations attracting the world's leading scientific talents," said Professor Sir Richard Friend.
Meanwhile, Prof. Rachid Yazami, the 2023 VinFuture Main Prize Winner, highly appreciated the breakthrough and influence of this prestigious scientific award.
According to Professor Rachid Yazami, VinFuture not only honors innovations that impact all of humanity but also creates a foundation for Vietnam to become a center for connecting and developing pioneering technology in the world.
Vietnam has excellent scientists, good technology experts, talented engineers, along with a potential market. In particular, the gap between Vietnamese science and technology and the world is narrowing thanks to bridges like VinFutures.
"This facilitates the rapid and effective deployment of new technology, contributing to promoting sustainable development not only for Vietnam but also for the world," said Prof. Rachid Yazami.
Predicting the scientific field that will be highlighted in the VinFuture Prize 2024, Prof. Rachid Yazami's combination of the Internet with Universal Mobile Communications could be a candidate for the Main Prize.
In addition, in the energy sector, research on smart and safe materials is also of great interest. In particular, technologies that can solve major challenges such as battery charging time and safety - key factors to promote the wider use of electric vehicles, contributing to the goal of sustainable development.
