Professor Sir Richard Henry Friend: VinFuture Prize will bring many surprises and excitement

Professor Sir Richard Friend, Chairman of the VinFuture Prize Council, commented that the number of nominations this year not only increased but also spread across many different fields, showing the increasingly positive reception of the world's scientific community.

He also shared that the Council's judging work was completed in September and the upcoming VinFuture Prize Winners will bring an exciting surprise!

Professor Richard Henry Friend, Chairman of the VinFuture Prize Council, emphasized the importance of the VinFuture Prize in its mission of connecting science with practice.

Celebrating initiatives with real impact

- Professor, from the perspective of the Chairman of the VinFuture Prize Council from the first season until now, how do you evaluate the growth through each season?

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, etc.

This reflects the growing awareness and understanding of the values that VinFuture celebrates: works and inventions that have a real impact on the daily lives of millions of people.

The prize is not only awarded for groundbreaking scientific ideas, but also honors work that creates significant change in important areas such as health, sustainable food supply, and climate.

At the same time, we – the judges – are always looking for groundbreaking innovations, discoveries that are unknown or not yet widely applied but promise the potential to create positive turning points in the future.

- Could you please "reveal" the areas that may attract special attention this season?

I can't reveal specifics, but the global impact of these projects will certainly be a key factor for people to pay attention to.

At the same time, we not only honor breakthroughs in science and technology, but also appreciate the impact of the winning projects. The fields may be different, but all projects contribute to improving the quality of life. After judging, we believe that the winning projects will bring many great stories and messages to share with the public.

This year, we completed the judging process in September. I am sure that when the Award Winners are announced at the VinFuture Awards Ceremony in December, it will bring an interesting surprise to the public.

Professor Henry Friend expressed his excitement at the diversity and innovation of the nominations for this year's VinFuture Awards.

VinFuture - the bridge between science and life

- Regarding the global impact you mentioned, how do you think the innovations that VinFuture honors will affect the world?

With VinFuture, we aim to create an award that can vividly reflect how scientific and technological advances impact the overall global development situation. So the most important message is global recognition for the awarded works, while at the same time raising everyone's awareness of the common pressing issues facing humanity.

Looking back at previous seasons, we can see that nominations are honored because they contribute to solutions to global problems, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, or decarbonizing the energy system with battery storage.

Another encouraging thing for me is that the public increasingly understands that these problems affect not just individual countries or societies, but the entire world. No place can escape the consequences of wrongdoing or indifference. On the contrary, every society and every country has the opportunity to work together to make things right and better.

- The Professor has accompanied the VinFuture Prize for a long time, overcoming the challenges of the pandemic period in 2021 and witnessing a strong recovery in 2024. So how do you evaluate the significance of the VinFuture Prize for the future?

I believe that the VinFuture Prize has created a huge positive impact globally. Not only that, VinFuture also shows that people have to change and adapt. Because there is no single solution to all problems. The challenge is to find the most efficient way to use materials, from production to storage and use of energy.

We’ve also seen major advances in solar energy. In the 2023 season, we celebrated an invention that dramatically improved the efficiency of silicon solar cells. However, there’s still a lot of potential to improve the efficiency of these panels through the use of new materials.

Certainly, this will be an important topic in the upcoming scientific discussion at VinFuture Science and Technology Week 2024 in early December.

Professor Friend affirmed that materials science still has a lot of potential, especially for the energy industry.

- And what about Vietnam specifically, according to the Professor, how has VinFuture contributed to improving Vietnam's position on the global science map?

This is obvious because Vietnam's prestige and appeal on the global science map is increasingly evident. The VinFuture Prize attracts attention from many places, and in particular, we are honored to welcome great scientists to Vietnam.

For example, in the first season, Dr. Katalin Karikó and Prof. Drew Weissman - two scientists who won the VinFuture Prize for their research that helped develop the mRNA vaccine against COVID-19 - were present in Hanoi. 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, we were delighted to hear that 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. It was truly inspiring, proving that Vietnam is also gradually becoming one of the destinations attracting the world's leading scientific talents.

- Thank you very much, Professor!

Ha An

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