Dedication to science secures young lecturer professor title

Phạm Vũ Hồng Sơn, 37, has become the youngest lecturer at the Hồ Chí Minh University of Technology after being appointed Associate Professor.— Photo tienphong.vn

HÀ NỘI — Phạm Vũ Hồng Sơn, 37, a lecturer at Hồ Chí Minh City University of Technology, has become the youngest Associate Professor at the university.

Sơn has been given the title after more than 50 scientific works published in prestigious domestic and foreign journals and two copyrights on software using artificial intelligence to manage construction safety and online bidding.

Sơn talked to Tiền Phong (Vanguard) newspaper about his most memorable study, “A Hybrid Bayesian Fuzzy-Game Model for Improving the Negotiation Effectiveness of Construction Material Procurement”, published in a magazine of American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE).

“It was one of my first studies on Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Game Theory (GT),” he said.

Predicting the intentions of others is one of the biggest challenges, he said.

And the study has built a decision-making support system from a lot of information collected in the past and present to predict the strategy and bidding method of many competitors at the same time, thereby offering the most suitable price with a high winning rate, he added.

Currently, online bidding has been widely applied, he said.

There are some products, which prices change very quickly because they are highly dependent on user demand and input supply sources such as electricity, oil or metal prices. Therefore, a decision to choose the right purchase price greatly affects the profit of a business, he said.

The system can synthesise and analyse a lot of information at the same time to get an optimal pricing strategy, then negotiate or bid with many suppliers around the world to find the best purchase price, he said.

“My research team and I are still trying to perfect the system and hope to be able to commercialise it in the near future,” he said.

Sơn and his teammates have successfully developed Manaworker software that can be used on the web, Android and IOS operating systems, and connect to GPS to monitor and warn workers on construction sites of hazards.

After a trial application at a few construction sites, the workers’ safety violations have been significantly reduced. The result encouraged him to continue researching and integrating more new features for the software in the future, he said.

Time is priceless

“For me, scientific research does not have a fixed time. Research time will be unlimited. I could research at any time of the day,” Sơn said.

Even when he is driving, feeding his baby, teaching or going to bed, he is still thinking about the problem he is researching, he said.

“One day when I am giving a lecture, I suddenly have a good idea so I immediately write it down on paper,” he said.

He often stays up all night to do his research when he has a good idea, he said.

“Therefore, time is priceless for me,” he said.

Sơn also said the value of time in scientific research is also presented in the perseverance of each researcher because there are studies being applied immediately and have high contributions to society, but some studies have to take 20 to 50 years to be applied.

Talking about pressure when doing scientific research, Sơn said he often tells his students that the high expectations of society will also put some pressure on researchers, but if you want to become a genuine scientist, you must be responsible for your own choices, set your own goals and create the pressure to accomplish them.

“Above all, I feel very honoured when my dedication is recognised. It is also a spiritual encouragement for me to be more motivated in the process of research and teaching in the future,” he said. — VNS