Winners of the Vietnamese Talent Awards (VTA) was announced yesterday in Hanoi. For the past 13 years, the Vietnamese Talent Awards (VTA) have become a launch pad for young people, start-up companies and groups.

Vietnamese Talent Awards (VTA) have become a launch pad for young people, start-up companies and groups. Photo: DTNews

This year's event saw the participation of the Politburo member and Head of the Communist Party of Vietnam Central Committee's Information and Education Commission Vo Van Thuong, former vice State President and Chairman of Vietnam Study Promotion Association Nguyen Thi Doan, NA Committee for Science, Technology and Environment Chairman Phan Xuan Dung, Minister of Science and Technology Chu Ngoc Anh, and Minister of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs Dao Ngoc Dung.

In 2018, VTA prize value was doubled, VND200 million (USD8,700) for first prize, VND100 million for second prizes and VND50 million for third prizes.

With the theme of “The Power of Digital Technology,” this year’s awards in IT attracted a total of 318 participating products.

After a thorough evaluating process, the judges decided not to grant the first-prize as no products were considered qualified enough. Instead, two second-place, five third-place and seven consolation prizes to the most outstanding IT products at this year’s event.

Accordingly, the second-place IT prize went to Vbee – Vietnamese Text to Speech by Vbee JSC, which is the first service in Vietnam using artificial intelligence to turn Vietnamese text into human-sounding speech.

Another secone-place winner was the Stringee – Communication APIs for voice, video and SMS by Stringee JSC, which helps developers and businesses quickly add SMS, video, or voice calling to apps and websites without having to build or maintain the back-end infrastructure.

In addition, the organisers also presented the Vietnamese Talent Awards 2018 in medicine to honour excellent researches on medicine which have been applied in practice to achieve high efficiency in disease examination and treatment and have significant socio-economic implications.

Accordingly, the award was given to the Epidemiology - new advances in the diagnosis, treatment and improvement of breast cancer treatment, by Prof., Dr. Tran Van Thuan, Director of K Hospital in Hanoi, and his colleagues.

In Science and Technology field, the Vietnamese Talents Awards 2018 was granted to the work related to the application of mechanised technology in coal mining to improve productivity at Ha Lam Coal JSC by engineer Le Minh Chuan and his colleagues.

President of the Vietnam Union of Science and Technology Associations Dang Vu Minh and Vice chairman of Vingroup Le Khac Hiep presented the first sci-tech prize to the work related to the application of mechanised technology in coal mining to improve productivity at Ha Lam Coal JS Company. Photo: DTNews

In Environment field the top prize award was presented to the invention of a toxic waste incinerator and a book featuring solutions for designing green works in Vietnam by Prof., Dr Pham Ngoc Dang from Vietnam Association for Conservation of Nature and Environment.

In VTA 2018, there was also a category of awards to promote talent proposed by the Vietnam Association for Promoting Education. The awards aimed to encourage self-learning inpiduals who have overcome difficulties to contribute to their community. Six inventions which were selected to be honored were: Grass cutter by Nguyen Nhu Linh from Thai Binh Province, Secondary air supply device by Nguyen Van Vinh from Long An Province, sowing robot by Pham Van Hat from Hai Duong Province, Pipeless pump by Do Van Truong from Ninh Binh Province, TK90 stove by Le Hong from Phu Tho Province, Publishing project by Nguyen Bich Lan from Thai Binh Province.

Initiated in 2005 by the Vietnam Study Promotion Association and co-organised by the Vietnam Posts and Telecommunications Group, Vietnam Television and Dantri/Dtinews online newspaper, VTA’s initial purpose was to honour breakthrough inventions in IT. In later years, the awards have been expanded to multiple other fields in the past 13 years, including health, sciences and technologies, environment, and talents promotion.

During the last 13 seasons, VTA has attracted increasing attention from inventors and the public, and plays a significant role in facilitating the development of the country's sciences and technology sector.

Specially, VTA 2018's first round received a product from a 13-year-old girl and a product from a 76-year old man, the youngest and the oldest among the participants.

Since VTA 2018 emphasizes on Industry 4.0, this is the first year the Promising Digital Products category has been introduced to the Information and Technology in addition to the Applied Products for Mobile Devices and Start-up IT Products sections./.

( VNF )