Doctor refused a salary of thousands of dollars to return to his country to work

Young scientist Tran Phuong Thao guides students in laboratory practice.

While many scientists and young talents were granted full scholarships to study abroad worth billions of dong and accepted invitations from many foreign organizations and companies to stay and work with salaries up to thousands of dollars, Ms. Phuong Thao decided to return to the country to teach and research at the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Chemistry, Hanoi University of Pharmacy.

What motivated the 33-year-old young scientist to want to return to her homeland was that she realized that in Korea, the generation born in 1960 and later had favorable conditions from the government, receiving scholarships to study abroad in countries with developed education and science, but after finishing their studies, they all returned to their country to work and enrich their homeland. From that reality, Tran Phuong Thao also wanted to return to Vietnam to work after finishing her doctorate, even though she received invitations from Korean organizations and companies that wanted her to stay and work.

In addition, she also wishes to continue researching Alzheimer's disease. Because in Vietnam, the disease is increasing with age. The dream of one day finding a specific medicine to treat Alzheimer's disease for people also urged her to return to her homeland.

According to Dr. Tran Phuong Thao, currently, the main drugs are still treating the symptoms of Alzheimer's disease, and there is no drug that clearly explains the cause of this disease.

The idea of ​​researching Alzheimer's disease was started by Ms. Phuong Thao when she was a PhD student at Seoul National University (Korea) in 2010. After defending her PhD thesis in Korea, in 2015, Ms. Thao returned to Vietnam to work at the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Chemistry, Hanoi University of Pharmacy and continued to pursue her research topic.

Knowing that researching a pharmaceutical-based active ingredient to treat a disease can take decades and cost a lot of money, Ms. Thao and her colleagues still work hard to research.

Scientist Tran Phuong Thao said that the research is currently in the cell testing phase, and will then be tested on animals. Hopefully, in about 2 years, there will be active ingredients for pre-clinical testing on humans.

Youth must have passion and new vision for science.

Directly being the head of a research project or indirectly guiding a graduate student to carry out a research topic, Ms. Phuong Thao always feels the difficulty when women participate in scientific research, having to balance their time to do a good job while maintaining family happiness and raising children.

Because there are many experiments that require scientists to stay late until 11-24 o'clock at night. And if doing research abroad, sometimes Ms. Thao has to stay up all night to monitor chemical reactions and experimental specimens. Because during the experiment, chemical compounds can release heat, causing fires and explosions, which is very dangerous.

In the process of research, scientists are not always successful. Once, Ms. Phuong Thao identified a compound and when testing its activity, the result was not successful, so she had to make another compound and try again many times until she got the desired result.

Despite the difficulties, with her burning passion, Dr. Tran Phuong Thao has achieved certain results in scientific research.

She has published 12 articles in SCI journals, is a presenter at 7 international conferences (AIMEC 2015, TETW2014, PSK2013, ...) and is a co-author of 9 articles in national and international journals. In addition, she is currently chairing a state-level project (Nafosted) and is the scientific secretary and key researcher of 2 other state-level projects.

The joy was even greater when Ms. Thao was honored to be one of three people awarded the 2017 Talented Female Scientist Scholarship.

Expressing her wishes and plans for the future, young scientist Tran Phuong Thao said she will make efforts to coordinate with Korean partners to soon produce a specific drug to treat Alzheimer's disease to cure people.

Not only passionate about science, Dr. Tran Phuong Thao also actively participates in teaching and guiding other young researchers. She always wants to "pass on the fire", enthusiasm, and desire to conquer science to young people.

“Young people must devote themselves to science and have a new vision. No matter where they are studying or working, young people should look to the Fatherland because this is the place that nurtures and gives wings to their dreams,” said scientist Phuong Thao.