Vietnamese PhD honored by Australian Academy of Science

Nguyen Duy Duy, 33 years old, is in the top 10 young scientists of 2024 of the Australian Academy of Science, after many years of research on turbulent flows.

Anh Duy is a PhD in Fluid Dynamics, working at the Water Security Program, Australian National Research Council (CSIRO). His research direction is developing turbulent flow models, solving problems of natural disasters and climate change.

In late March, he was one of 10 young scientists honored by the SIEF, Australian Academy of Science (AAS). The award has a history of nearly 100 years, awarded to scientists who have made positive contributions to industry, promoting community interests and national goals.

"I am proud to be the only foreigner honored this year," said Mr. Duy.

With this award, he was sponsored to attend the 73rd "Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings" scientific conference in Germany, in early July. This was an opportunity for him to meet nearly 50 Nobel laureates and 600 young scientists from around the world.

In addition, he passed two rounds of selection to be on the list of 14 scientists to speak at the conference. His talk mentioned the use of basic physical equations in flow dynamics, combining physical and biological models to monitor and forecast water quality.

He plans to present the application of scientific machine learning, a new data analysis method, in this study. Partial differential equations of non-linear functions are introduced into the loss function when training data for artificial neural networks, resulting in more accurate and long-term prediction results. This method can be applied to areas lacking observational data, useful in forecasting water resources and water quality in developing countries like Vietnam.

Duy on a field trip to Lake Hume, Australia, March 2022. Photo: Character provided

Duy has been curious about swirling movements since he was in middle school. He happened to know about Van Gogh's painting "Starry Night" and wondered why these swirling strokes were so famous.

Later, he realized that these swirls resembled turbulent flows in fluids, including water and air. He was fascinated by observing these phenomena in everyday life, such as the movement of a whirlpool in a sink, the motion of a golf ball, or the swirling clouds in the sky.

In high school, the student of the Math - IT class at Ha Tinh Specialized School learned that this flow is applied in weather forecasting models, especially storms. Having learned about river systems and irrigation works from his grandfather, and living in a land with drought in the summer and storms and floods in the winter, he read more about turbulent flows.

In 2006, super typhoon Xangsane made landfall, causing great damage in the Central region. Hearing the howling wind, Mr. Duy opened the door and looked across the street, saw withered trees, murky water swirling, submerging the landscape. It was still the same eddies he often observed, but they were no longer beautiful, but had great destructive power. He wished he could predict the movement of environmental fluids, preventing the destruction of floods.

"That storm shaped my entire research path for the next decades," he said.

After graduating from high school, Duy entered the Faculty of Engineering, Water Resources University, and won a Russian government scholarship to study Basic Hydrodynamics at Saint Petersburg Polytechnic University. Duy then graduated with honors and won a full scholarship for a master's degree in Environmental and Earth Sciences at the University of Notre Dame, USA. There, he studied the instability in wave dynamics to develop a storm forecasting model.

Because he wanted to do applied research suitable for the environment in Vietnam, he continued to do his PhD in Fluid Dynamics, Faculty of Mechanical, Mechatronics and Aerospace Engineering, University of Sydney, Australia. His research direction is the effect of temperature on stratified turbulent flow.

In 2022, Duy graduated from the University of Sydney with the best thesis award. He currently teaches at the school, in parallel with his work at the research institute.

Having lived and studied in three countries, Duy believes that the biggest difficulty is trying to adapt every time he changes schools and directions. After decades of working and studying Physics and developing hydraulic models, when he started working at a research institute, he realized that he needed much broader knowledge. For example, working on water quality, he had to understand ecological and biological models and learn how to incorporate them into his models. This was almost like learning completely new knowledge.

"I have to work harder, come home later every night, and still work on weekends," Duy shared.

Thanks to that, Duy learned how to help himself overcome similar difficulties. A year ago, when he had to move the project to a new target, from studying a few scattered rivers and lakes, to expanding to the entire river basin, or even the vast delta, he thought of applying artificial intelligence and machine learning. Meanwhile, in this field, monitoring data is very rare. He had to learn and find solutions.

Anh Duy and his supervisor on the day he received his PhD from the University of Sydney, 2022. Photo: Provided by the character

Prof. Dr. Nguyen Trung Viet, Vice Principal of Thuy Loi University, is proud of his diligent and intelligent student. Now a colleague, he appreciates Duy's efforts in promoting international research cooperation. Many times, Duy has brought Australian experts to cooperate with the school, or organized a series of lectures and seminars to raise students' awareness of the environment.

"I admire Duy because he has lived and worked abroad for many years, but he always looks towards Vietnam," said teacher Viet.

In addition to researching and teaching at university, Mr. Duy teaches Physics to high school students, maintaining this "side job" since 2016. He often uses vivid, familiar examples to help students understand the lesson. According to him, despite in-depth research, basic physical laws are still the most important foundation.

Believing that the more solid his knowledge is, the more he knows how to explain it simply, he considers each teaching session a test of his own understanding. Once, he lectured on astrophysics but the students did not understand and kept asking questions. Even though he knew the answer, he could not explain it in an easy-to-understand way to the 11th graders, so he had to read more books and systematize his knowledge.

Having been involved in Physics for many years, Duy admits that he sees flows everywhere. According to him, hobbies such as learning foreign languages, playing musical instruments, painting... help him transform life from a chaotic state (turbulent flow) to a balanced state, like the movement of laminar flow. He is fluent in three foreign languages, including English, French and Russian.

Currently, he is participating in a program to enhance the capacity of people and businesses in the Mekong Delta on climate change, coordinated by the Association of Vietnamese Intellectuals and Experts in Australia and the Australian Embassy in Vietnam.

"I hope to participate in more scientific education activities and inspire research for young people," said Duy.

Phuong Anh - Vnexpress.net

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