Because he loved playing video games, Lai Manh Tuan pursued Information Technology and became a researcher at the largest market maker on the New York Stock Exchange.
Lai Manh Tuan, 28, received his PhD in Computer Science from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (USA) in October, after three years of pursuing it. Normally, the time to complete a PhD program in the US is 5 years.
He currently works as a quantitative analyst at Citadel Securities, a financial firm valued at $22 billion by 2022. It is the largest market maker on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), the largest stock exchange in the United States.
"In addition, I am happy to create new methods that are published at major scientific conferences," Tuan shared.
Lai Manh Tuan. Photo: Character provided
Tuan's passion for Computer Science was ignited when he was a student at Le Ngoc Han Secondary School, Hanoi. At that time, the trend of playing online games was booming, Tuan was very passionate and spent a lot of time on popular games, such as Vo Lam Truyen Ky. When his friend invited him to take an IT class, Tuan thought he would be able to play more video games so he agreed. Therefore, he was exposed to programming since 8th grade.
"I was happy to learn how to make computers work and kept pursuing it from there," Tuan recalled.
In his senior year, Le Ngoc Han School selected excellent students to study high school in Korea. Tuan was among five Vietnamese students who received a scholarship to study at the Korean Academy of Sciences - a specialized high school for gifted science students in 2010.
When he first arrived in Korea, Tuan faced a double language barrier. The curriculum was taught in English and Korean, but Tuan was not good at either. After the first semester, Tuan's average score was just over 2.0/4.0.
If the student scores below 3.0 for two consecutive semesters, the scholarship will be cut, or even forced to return to Vietnam. Afraid of losing his place, Tuan spent the entire summer studying the next semester's subjects in advance. Tuan also formed a group to practice Korean with his fellow countrymen and talked more with native speakers to improve his Korean. Gradually, Tuan caught up with his friends and completed the program in 2013.
Following his passion since childhood, Tuan chose Computer Science at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST).
Moving to university, Tuan "lost the rhythm" in the first semester. The specialized subjects had different learning methods than high school, causing him to not get the high scores he wanted. Therefore, Tuan often sat in the library studying until 10 pm, even until 1 am on exam days.
To balance, Tuan still arranges time to relax with his friends in the Vietnamese Student Association at school, play soccer or cook on weekends.
His efforts helped Tuan win many scholarships and graduate as valedictorian in 2017.
Tuan received the outstanding student award from the KAIST principal in 2014. Photo: Character provided
Seeing many opportunities for career development, in 2018, Tuan applied and won a master's scholarship in Computer Science at Purdue University, one of the 10 best computer engineering schools in the US, according to US News. In 2020, Tuan continued to do a doctorate in this field at the University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign.
This was also the time when the Covid-19 pandemic broke out, which was one of the most difficult periods for Tuan. Normally, PhD students need to find a problem in their first year to decide to delve deeper. Because he could not meet his professors directly, Tuan had to read and research previous research to find a direction. Tuan then chose to pursue the field of natural language processing, research that makes computers capable of interpreting, interacting with, and understanding human language.
Tuan became interested in this field when he interned at Adobe, an American computer software corporation, while still studying for his master's degree.
Dr. Bui Huu Trung, research director and Tuan's mentor at Adobe, commented that his students work very efficiently and learn quickly. Tuan interned three times from 2017 to 2020, and together with researchers here, published 10 papers at leading conferences on AI and natural language processing and has six patents, most of them as the main author. In addition, Tuan's keyword extraction algorithm is used in two Adobe products, Adobe Experience Manager and Project Blink.
"Tuan's work results are extraordinary, because the company sets extremely high standards for the 300 PhD students who come to Adobe Research for internships each year," said Mr. Trung.
In addition to Adobe, Tuan also interned at Google, Amazon and Nvidia. He was often given problems related to natural language processing and had to find a solution within 3 months.
Tuan likes Google's natural language processing and drug conversion project the most. Normally, scientists spend a lot of time researching and creating drugs. In Google's project, when a user says they want to create a drug to treat any disease, the model built by Tuan and his colleagues will calculate to give the formula of effective drugs in a short time.
Tuan shared that whenever he encounters difficulties in research, he chooses to solve small problems before returning to the big problem, and tries as many ideas as possible.
“There is no other way but to spend a lot of time testing ideas to choose the right solution,” Tuan said.
Finally, Tuan graduated with a PhD with a perfect score of 4.0/4.0, publishing more than 20 scientific articles at leading conferences in this field.
Tuan worked as an intern at Google, USA, in 2017. Photo: Character provided
However, after graduating, Tuan did not continue pursuing an academic career but instead worked for Citadel Securities, a stock trading company in the US.
"I want to learn and try working in a new field," Tuan said, adding that he wanted the challenge because the financial industry in the US has many opportunities for career breakthroughs.
Tuan is responsible for researching and building models to predict price changes, ensuring that transactions bring the most profit to the company. Although the job does not involve much natural language processing, according to Tuan, knowledge such as programming, probability and statistics, especially effective learning skills and problem solving, still come in handy when he steps out of his comfort zone.
What Tuan likes best about this job is the quick results. When he was doing research, it took months for an article he wrote to be approved. But with his new job, he only needs to change one detail in the system and the next day he can know the profit or loss results.
The challenge is the 10-11 hour workday, even more at tech companies. He has to learn about economics and financial markets, as well as new predictive analytics methods.
"But the new knowledge is good so spending more time is worth it," Tuan said.
Looking back on his journey, Tuan is most proud of the fact that he has continued to strive despite his low starting point. "I often feel that I am not as good as my friends, but I am not discouraged and always try my best. Intelligence is important, but diligence is what helps me overcome difficulties," Tuan said.
In parallel with his work at Citadel Securities, Tuan will pursue the Mathematical Economics program at John Hopkins - a top 10 university in the world, next year.
Vnexpress.net
source
Comment (0)