Xin chào!

First of all, I would like to thank Ton Duc Thang University for this honour.

It is truly a humbling experience to be accepting this award.

I would like to thank my mentors, colleagues, students and collaborators who encouraged, challenged and helped me in the past, even though we might have different skin colour, gender and/or religion.

And, of course, I would also like to thank my extended family and friends for always supporting me.

Without all these good people in my life, I think I will be still selling fish with my father at the roadside.

I had so many opportunities to learn and grow in the past. Education has turned my life around and I wish to help others to be educated. However, I think that education should involve more than teaching and learning. Knowledge generation is very important in education, in my opinion. It helps us to generate ideas to solve poverty, water crisis, global warming and many other problems.

For instance, our research team focused on superhydrophobic membrane which repels water like a lotus leaf. We learned and generated ideas to use the superhydrophobic membrane to capture CO2, reclaim water and purify food. I hope I will have more opportunities to work with the scientist and researchers from Ton Duc Thang University in the near future. I believe we can generate more knowledge to help more people together.

Last but not least, I would like to share my secret to sustain my scientific career. Many people ask me about my secret to work in science and technology, especially when they know that I am a woman with many roles such as researcher, educator, engineer, mother at the same time. I have no other secret formula. I just do what I love to do. I keep trying what I love to do even others think it is impossible. Perhaps, my English is poor. Every time I hear “impossible”, I think I heard “I am Possible”.

Cảm ơn các bạn