General information
Brief history
Staff and organizational structure
Education
Scientific research and technology transfer
Foreign cooperation
Alumni
Brief history: Faculty of Information Technology (the precursor of SoICT) – HUST is established in March 1995, on the basis of the merger of 3 units of the university: Faculty of Informatics, Laboratory of Information Processing (Faculty of Electronics and Telecommunications) and Computing and Applied Informatics Center. At that time, the Faculty is one of seven key Faculty of Information Technology established in Vietnam.
On May 19, 2009, the Ministry of Education and Training decided to establish The School of Information and Communications Technology (SoICT) on the basis of the Faculty of IT and Higher Education Development Support Project on ICT (HEDSPI), cooperation between the Governments of Vietnam and Japan.
Over 25 years of establishment and development, the former Faculty of Information Technology, as well as the School of Information and Communications Technology now, has made remarkable progress, deserving to be the leading flag in IT training, research and technology transfer in Vietnam.
Entering a new era, at the age of 25, SOICT has been implementing strong innovation steps in all aspects, taking advantage of the development opportunities of the field, in harmony with Vietnam’s transformation, to rapidly develop to international standards, ready to play a pioneering role in the digital transformation in Vietnam, as well as to become a top prestigious ICT center for training, scientific research and technology transfer in the region.
Staff and organizational structure: SoICT now has a large number of proficient staff, including 83% of lecturers who hold doctorates (~ 90% graduated in developed countries), and 28% hold Associate Professors degrees. SoICT also cooperates and associates with a large team of visiting lecturers who are experts and prestigious scientists both inside and outside Vietnam.
The scientists of SoICT are working at:
05 Training and scientific research departments: (i) Software Engineering, (ii) Information Systems, (iii) Computer Science, (iv) Computer Engineering and (v) Data Communications and Computer Networks;
04 Centers, including:
02 research centers: Centre for Research and Development on Satellite Navigation Technology in South East Asia (NAVIS) and Bach Khoa Cyber Security Centre (BKCS), as well as
02 training, research, and technology transfer support center: Center for Support Research and Technology Transfer (Innovation Center) and Computer Center;
05 Research Laboratories: Computer Systems; Data Science; Modeling, Simulation, and Optimization; Network and Communications Technology; Software Engineering and Distributed Computing.
Education: SOICT provides training programmes that are developed based on three core pillars of the ICT sector, namely: Computer Science (CS), Computer Engineering (CE), and Data Science (DS).
With the prestige has been built, SoICT has always been a prestigious training address selected by students and their families when pursuing a passion for ICT. In 2019, SoICT has 2 training programmes with the national highest entry scores in Group A: IT1 – Computer Science (27.42 points), and IT-E10 – Data Science and Intelligence Artificial (27 points). To be eligible for SoICT’s training programmes, candidates must be in top 1% of Group A in the National High School Graduation Examination.
Good entry condition and the help of professional and experienced teachers have resulted in SoICT’s students’ highest prizes at national and international IT competitions such as Vietnam Student Olympiad in IT ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC), Student Contest on Information Security, Samsung Collegiate Programming Cup (SCPC), etc. In 2019, one team from SoICT became one of 140 best teams to qualify for ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC) 2018 World Finals, which is the oldest and most prestigious international programming competition for students in all universities and colleges in the world. After the continuous 5-hour competition, members of Hanoi University of Science and Technology have solved 5 tests and ranked 41/135. Equally ranked with Hanoi University of Science and Technology, there are Princeton University, ETH Zürich, Kyoto University, University of British Columbia, etc.
Scientific research and technology transfer: Since our high qualify scientists cover most important ICT research areas, SoICT currently has high scientific research potential, follows three orientations: (i) towards international standards, (ii) combine with training to develop high quality human resources, and most importantly, (iii) create quality research products for Vietnam’s socio-economic development.
In recent years, SoICT has obtained outstanding scientific and technological achievements, typically: the number of ISI-Scopus articles in 2019 doubled compared to 2018; SoICT staff continually won prestigious science and technology awards such as Vietnamese Talent Award, Golden Globe Award; and especially, funding for scientific research has increased year by year, with diverse and competitive funding sources such as: KC Program, the Protocol, State-level Independent Projects, NAFOSTED of the Ministry of Science and Technology; Ministry-level Projects of the Ministry of Education and Training; Subject / Project financed by VinIF and VinTech of VinGroup; International Cooperation Projects sponsored by Horizon 2020, ERASMUS, US Army, Samsung, IBM, ect. In 2019, SoICT has called 35 billion VND for scientific research funding.
A number of scientific research products of SoICT staff has gained a foothold in the national market, including some history ones during IT development in Vietnam.
Text editor software BKED, developed by PhD. Quach Tuan Ngoc when he was a lecturer of Faculty of IT: this is one of the first Vietnamese text editing software in Vietnam.
Antivirus software BKAV, developed by MSc. Nguyen Tu Quang, lecturer of Department of Computer Engineering, is one of the most famous and popular anti-virus software in Vietnam.
High-precision positioning system NAVISTAR, developed by a research team of NAVIS Center, led by Assoc. Ta Hai Tung, and Assoc. La The Vinh. The product has earned the Vietnamese Talent Award 2015, and is being transferred to many units throughout Vietnam.
Speech synthesis system Vbee, developed by a research team led by PhD. Nguyen Thi Thu Trang, Department of Software Engineering. The product has been awarded the first prize Vietnamese Talent Award 2018, and is gradually asserting a foothold in the market.
In order to promote research activities towards technology transfer and innovation (startups, spinoffs), SoICT has established the Innovation Center, a supporting unit and coordinating operational cooperation between SoICT and companies.
Apart from training, research activities and technology transfer, SoICT has organized the SoICT – Symposium On Information and Communication Technology, an international seminar on ICT for 10 years. With 160 projects of scientists from 28 countries around the world: USA, France, Italy, Spain, Japan, China, ect sending to the Workshop, 6 keynotes of leading scientists in the world, and The Yearbook is stored and indexed by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), WoS (ISI), Scopus, SoICT has been the largest annual international ICT conference in Vietnam.
Foreign cooperation: International cooperation with prestigious training and research units in developing countries is always the key of SoICT’s external relations. Every year, through cooperation in bilateral – multilateral agreements, for example, Erasmus programmes with European Union universities, scholar-student exchange programmes with the Japan’s National Institute of Informatics (NII), University of Sydney (UniSyd), Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), Shibaura Institute of Technology, Osaka University (Japan), National University of Singapore (NUS), etc, SoICT has exchanged dozens of lecturers and students to work and study at partner universities, as well as receive many lecturers, scientists and students from advanced countries to teach and learn short-term programmes. SoICT also signed a cooperation agreement with Uppsala University (Sweden) to implement a 3 + 1 double degree training program for students of the Global ICT Program: students study at Hanoi University of Technology for 3 years, and have the option to study in Sweden for a year to get degrees awarded by both universities. The program has been in operation for 2 years, and is evaluated from both sides before being implemented at a new level in subsequent years.
Beside cooperating with training and research institutions, SoICT has also maintained and expanded an extensive collaborative network with leading IT corporations and companies in Vietnam and around the world. The network now has more than 200 businesses, effectively supports SoICT in: (i) providing internship for students; (ii) supporting soft skills training and foreign language training, (iii) cooperating in scientific research and technology transfer, (iv) sponsoring scholarships and funding for training and scientific research of student. SoICT has sustainable cooperation with Samsung Vietnam through supporting training, internships, teaching, and investing laboratory facilities programmes. SoICT also strengthens close cooperation with IBM Vietnam in developing training programmes, supporting students in accessing advanced technologies and being ready to enter a competitive international labor market.
Alumni: Over 25 years of development, with the reputation of a leading ICT training unit in Vietnam, SoICT has attracted excellent students, many of whom have won national and international awards. Good entry scores together with up-to-date training programmes, effective training environment and enthusiastic qualified lecturers are important factors to ensure future success for students.
It can be said that there are no big IT enterprises in Vietnam that do not have HUST’s IT engineers holding the key positions. Among such technology leaders there are prominent names such as: Hoang Viet Anh – Deputy General Director of FPT Group, Duong Dung Trieu – General Director of FPT Information System (FIS) , Ngo Dien Hy – General Director of VNPT-Media, Vuong Quang Khai – Tech Director of Vinagame Group, Nguyen Tu Quang – Chairman and General Director of BKAV, Lu Thanh Long – Chairman of MISA, Tran Viet Hung – Founder of GotIt, the first Vietnamese startup in Silicon Valley, Nguyen Ha Dong – the father of the globally famous Flappy Bird, etc.
Moreover, SoICT has a community of hundreds of alumni working at the Technology Capital of World – Silicon Valley, in global technology corporations such as Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon, Adobe, etc, and a similar number working in the technology powerhouse, Japan, as well as a large community working in global technology corporations across 5 continents. Furthermore, every year, SoICT ‘s excellent students receive many scholarships to pursue their academic career in developed countries: North America, Europe, Japan, Korea, etc, and many stay remained to become professors and scientists working at famous universities and research institutes around the world.
It is an omission not to mention the success of Science and Technology of HUST’s students/alumni. Prestigious IT awards such as: Vietnamese Intelligence, Vietnamese Talent Award, Sao Khue Award, etc have recognized top IT products from HUST every year. And a lot of products are developed into successful startup projects, creating valuable start-ups, contributing to inspire the Innovation movement in Vietnam.
The success of Alumni is the first guarantee for SoICT’s training quality. Last but not least, in the trend of autonomy and integration of Vietnam Higher Education, under the guidance of the University, SoICT has proactively implemented activities to improve training quality, conduct explicit orientation for advanced training, in order to training tech leaders to take an active role to lead the process of digital transformation in Vietnam.