Efforts should be made to increase the number of project registrations for KC-4.0 Program in the southern region

Thu, 23/11/2023 - 21:58

"That is the observation of Director of VNUHCM Vu Hai Quan at the Seminar on the Evaluation of the National Key Program for Research, Development, and Application of Industry 4.0 Technology (KC-4.0), code KC-4.0/19-25, Phase 2019-2023, and the orientation for the period up to 2030.

Attending the seminar were Mr. Huynh Thanh Dat - Minister of the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST); Mr. Bui The Duy - Deputy Minister of MOST; Assoc. Prof. Dr. Vu Hai Quan - Director of VNUHCM, Head of KC-4.0/19-25 Program; Assoc. Prof. Dr. Nguyen Thanh Thuy - Deputy Head of KC-4.0/19-25 Program, and more than 100 lecturers, scientists, managers, and businesses.

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Vu Hai Quan said that after 4 years of implementation, the KC-4.0 Program has selected 74 tasks out of 500 proposed registrations. However, only 4 projects were funded for universities in the South.

"Meanwhile, research activities in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) in Ho Chi Minh City, in particular, and the South, in general, are very vibrant. For example, in 2022 alone, among the top 10 educational institutions with the most international publications in the field of computer science in the Scopus list, up to 7 units are located in the Southern provinces," shared the Director of VNUHCM.

He further illustrated the total funding that the Vingroup Innovation Foundation (VinIF) has sponsored for projects, initiatives, scholarships, etc., of VNUHCM in the past 5 years, which is about 90 billion VND, accounting for 11.25% of the total nearly 800 billion VND that VINIF has sponsored. Scientists at VNUHCM have also won many awards in AI competitions, such as the First Prize in the NVIDIA AI City Challenge at CVPR 2022 and 2023; Second Prize in the ICCV 2023 X-ray Lung Film Diagnosis; top 5 in the world at many competitions organized by AI associations such as CVPR, MICCAI, ICMR.

VNUHCM has also collaborated with Ho Chi Minh City to organize the AI Challenge from 2020 to now. In 2023 alone, the competition attracted more than 630 participating teams with over 2,700 participants (including high school students).

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Vu Hai Quan concluded: “Southern universities excel in research capacity and scientific publications. I hope that the professors will provide frank feedback to find fundamental solutions to leverage the potential of Southern scientists. From there, increase the number of project registrations for the KC-4.0 Program in Southern universities in the coming period.”

The plenary session listened to the presentation of Assoc. Prof. Dr. Doan Ngoc San (Vietnam University of Oil and Gas) on the Integrated Artificial Intelligence System for Evaluating the Prospects of Oil and Gas Geological Data, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Nguyen Thi Trang (Hanoi Medical University, Ministry of Health) shared about the Application of Artificial Intelligence in Screening, Diagnosis, and Treatment of Common Genetic Diseases, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Pham Tran Vu (Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology, VNUHCM) spoke about the Monitoring and Forecasting System, air quality warning based on multi-source data collection, pilot for a large city.

In the discussion session, delegates shared their opinions and proposed solutions to contribute to improving the effectiveness of the KC-4.0 Program.