Vietnam National University, Hanoi - 30 years of innovation and creativity

Attending the ceremony were Mr. Do Van Chien - Secretary of the Party Central Committee, Chairman of the Central Committee of the Vietnam Fatherland Front; Ms. Nguyen Thuy Anh - Member of the Party Central Committee, Member of the National Assembly Standing Committee, Chairman of the National Assembly's Social Committee; Mr. Dao Ngoc Dung - Member of the Party Central Committee, Minister of Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs; Mr. Nguyen Kim Son - Member of the Party Central Committee, Minister of Education and Training, former President of VNU; Mr. Huynh Thanh Dat - Member of the Party Central Committee, Minister of Science and Technology; Ms. Dao Hong Lan - Member of the Party Central Committee, Minister of Health; Mr. Hau A Lenh - Member of the Party Central Committee, Minister, Chairman of the Ethnic Committee; Mr. Pham Tat Thang - Member of the Party Central Committee, Deputy Head of the Central Mass Mobilization Commission; Mr. Vu Hai Quan - Member of the Party Central Committee, President of VNU-HCMC; Comrade Luong Quoc Doan - Member of the Party Central Committee, President of the Central Committee of the Vietnam Farmers' Union, together with leaders of Departments and Bureaus under the Office of the Party Central Committee, Office of the President, Office of the National Assembly, Office of the Government, Central Inspection Committee, State Audit, Government Inspectorate and ministries, branches, localities, enterprises, universities, research institutes, foreign embassies and international organizations in Vietnam.
On the side of VNU, there were the VNU Board of Directors, leaders of the Office, functional departments, leaders of member units, and affiliated units of VNU, together with generations of leaders, scientists, teachers, managers, and students, graduate students, and researchers of VNU from all periods.

The 30th anniversary of the Government's promulgation of the Decree on VNU and 117 years of tradition is an important milestone in the history of VNU's development; an opportunity for VNU to express gratitude and strengthen connections and cooperation with central and local ministries and branches; domestic and foreign enterprises and partners; especially to express gratitude to generations of teachers and students over the past 30 years who have accompanied the development of VNU, thereby maintaining traditions, promoting core values, fostering pride and strengthening the spirit of solidarity and consensus in implementing the VNU development strategy in the new period; especially, this is an opportunity for VNU to recognize and evaluate the achievements and lessons learned in the past time, and to plan the Strategy and important orientations to bring VNU to new heights in the new context of the country and the era.
On this occasion, Comrade Nguyen Phu Trong, General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Vietnam sent a congratulatory letter to VNU. On behalf of the Party and State leaders, with personal feelings, General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong acknowledged, congratulated, commended and thanked VNU for the results it has achieved in recent years, especially since moving its headquarters to the new urban area in Hoa Lac. This is a great recognition, encouragement and motivation for VNU. The General Secretary wrote: “After 30 years of striving to build and develop, VNU has achieved outstanding achievements and truly become a large multidisciplinary training and scientific research center, holding a particularly important leading position in the country, playing a core and leading role in the Vietnamese higher education system”.
VNU was honored to receive congratulations and flower baskets from General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong, President Vo Van Thuong, Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh, and National Assembly Chairman Vuong Dinh Hue.
Regarding the achievements of VNU, Secretary of the Party Central Committee, Chairman of the Central Committee of the Vietnam Fatherland Front, Vice Chairman of the Central Emulation and Reward Council Do Van Chien sent his congratulations to generations of teachers, scientists, students and pupils of the university for their continuous efforts in the past time.

Comrade Do Van Chien spoke at the ceremony

During 30 years of construction and development, generations of lecturers, students and pupils of VNU have constantly strived, overcome many difficulties and challenges, achieved valuable and proud results in training, scientific research, technology transfer, serving the country's development, becoming a prestigious training institution in the country and the region, gradually establishing its position in the international arena.
"The 30-year achievement of implementing the multidisciplinary and multi-field university model has contributed to embellishing the glorious 117-year tradition, making worthy contributions to the cause of building and defending the Fatherland, and has been recognized by the Party and State, awarded the Gold Star Order and many other noble awards," Mr. Do Van Chien emphasized.
Comrade Do Van Chien, Secretary of the Party Central Committee, Chairman of the Central Committee of the Vietnam Fatherland Front, requested VNU to thoroughly grasp the Resolution of the 8th Party Central Committee Conference and the Party's policies and guidelines, and devote all efforts to developing and submitting to the Government for consideration and approval solutions, mechanisms and resources to promote all potentials of VNU, including the construction of the VNU Urban Area in Hoa Lac to become a source of pride, a symbol of intelligence, a source of inspiration for learning, research, innovation and cooperation in the development of the Vietnamese higher education system.

With the Party's strategic vision and the desire to develop Vietnamese higher education, the 4th Conference of the Central Executive Committee of the Communist Party of Vietnam (7th tenure) issued a Resolution, which clearly stated the task of "Building a number of key national universities" to act as the locomotive and backbone for the country's higher education. On December 10, 1993, Prime Minister Vo Van Kiet signed Decree No. 97/CP on the establishment of VNU on the basis of rearranging and reorganizing a number of universities and scientific research institutes in the Hanoi area.
The Decree stipulates that VNU is a large multidisciplinary training and scientific research center, combining training and research with practice, with the task of training high-level experts in science and technology, and providing academic support for other universities. VNU is a central-level public service unit, operating under the Government's Decree and the Operating Regulations issued by the Prime Minister, with a seal bearing the National Emblem, a level 1 budget unit, the VNU Board of Directors appointed by the Prime Minister, with high autonomy in terms of expertise, finance and personnel; the State prioritizes the allocation of an area of ​​nearly 1,200 hectares to build the VNU Urban Area in Hoa Lac.
VNU was established with the vision and expectation of generations of Party and State leaders about the largest university in the country of international stature with the mission of training high-quality, highly qualified human resources, nurturing talents; scientific research, technology development and multidisciplinary and multi-field knowledge transfer; contributing to the construction, development and protection of the country.
  In his commemorative speech, Party Secretary and President of VNU Le Quan shared that VNU is proud to inherit the rich history and glorious tradition of 117 years from the University of Indochina (1906), Vietnam National University (1945) and the University of General Sciences (1956). That is, vision in thinking, high quality, high level in training and the pinnacle, excellence in academics, proactive international integration; is the tradition of training and nurturing talents, with the spirit of always being pioneers, innovative, ready to serve the nation.
After 30 years of promoting autonomy and high self-responsibility, VNU has achieved many important achievements and is making constant efforts to adapt to the new context. In particular, through practice, the VNU model has affirmed the superiority of the multidisciplinary, multi-field university model, operating under an autonomous mechanism. This model helps VNUs test new policies and regulations, greatly contributing to the development of the country's higher education system. Based on the testing of the two VNUs, many regulations applied specifically to VNUs have been extended to all other universities in Vietnam such as: autonomous enrollment, printing and signing of doctoral and master's degrees, etc.
VNU President Le Quan emphasized that with its glorious tradition and team of leading scientists in the country, the outstanding efforts of generations of teachers and students, the special attention of the Party, the State and the support of the Government and ministries, with high autonomy, VNU has always been creative, pioneering, training many talents for the country, proposing and successfully piloting many important policies, pioneering in innovation of higher education, deserving to be the flag, the pillar of higher education in Vietnam.
The journey of 30 years of growth and development is the inheritance and continuation of the perseverance in innovation, striving for outstanding development, becoming the leading university, pioneer of Vietnamese higher education, and the journey to affirm the domestic and international position of VNU.

VNU was developed based on two major universities in Hanoi: Hanoi University of Science and Hanoi University of Foreign Languages. Over 30 years of construction and development, VNU has grown steadily in terms of scale, training fields, training level and quality.
“Many scientists of VNU are leading scientists, ranked high - the top in Vietnam among the most influential scientists in the world, winning many State awards, Ho Chi Minh awards as well as prestigious international scientific awards. This is the pride and most valuable asset of VNU,” affirmed VNU President Le Quan.
Up to now, VNU has basically completed the multidisciplinary and multi-field structure with 37 units. In particular, the training and research units operate under an open and interconnected mechanism, linked under the unified management and coordination of VNU, sharing the scientific staff and technological infrastructure, facilities and techniques. The scientific staff working at the units are a shared human resource when participating in the training and scientific research process.
From only having more than 50 training majors, up to now, VNU is implementing more than 500 training programs with a scale of about 60,000 students, including about 1,000 international students. Since 1993, there have been about 280,000 graduates from VNU, including 230,000 bachelors, 43,000 masters and nearly 3,000 doctors. Notably, more than 60% of VNU's postgraduate students are lecturers from universities and research institutes nationwide. With its prestige and quality, VNU has truly become a place to train "mainframes" - training lecturers for many universities nationwide.
With a multidisciplinary and multi-field structure, VNU has the strength of a team of scientific staff to be able to participate in solving key scientific and technological problems of the country in all fields from basic science in nature and humanities to economics, law, science and technology, educational science, health sciences and interdisciplinary fields.

The work of discovering, nurturing and training talents is one of the special tasks that VNU always pays attention to, and is implemented methodically, including discovering and nurturing students when they are still high school students and continuing to be trained and developed at the university, master's and doctoral levels.
The specialized schools that have been established for a long time with a long history of achievements are known nationwide such as: High School for the Gifted in Natural Sciences (under the University of Natural Sciences) and High School for the Gifted in Foreign Languages ​​(under the University of Foreign Languages); recently, High School for Educational Sciences (under the University of Education), High School for the Gifted in Social Sciences and Humanities (under the University of Social Sciences and Humanities). In particular, students of High School for the Gifted in Natural Sciences have won 301 international and regional Olympic medals, including 77 Gold medals, 87 Silver medals, 76 Bronze medals and 61 regional Olympic medals. In 2023 alone, the number of Gold medals of VNU accounts for 50% of the total number of Gold medals nationwide.
The model of training excellent students of high schools under VNU in recent years has been a pioneer model in the country in discovering, nurturing and training talents for the country. Many leading researchers, scientists, entrepreneurs and good leaders have grown up from training units of VNU.
In addition to standard training programs, VNU has developed special programs to train and foster talents. Accordingly, the new training regulations were issued at the end of 2022. VNU's current training programs include: Talent training programs, high-quality training programs (including advanced, international standard training programs - training according to the content and programs of prestigious universities in the world) and standard training programs.
VNU has developed the Project "Incubation of young scientists at VNU" to concretize and implement the policies of the Party and the State, deploy the Development Strategy of VNU to 2030, vision to 2045. All students, students, and trainees who wish to become scientists and meet the capacity requirements will be able to participate in the program of VNU. Incubation of young scientists at VNU is implemented synchronously from career guidance and attracting excellent students from high schools, undergraduate, postgraduate, and post-doctoral training at VNU and international partners, recruitment, arrangement, use, and human resource development.

In recent years, VNU has always been at the forefront of technology development, start-ups and knowledge transfer, contributing to the sustainable development of regions and localities where VNU cooperates. VNU has been entrusted by the State and Government to preside over the construction and implementation of many important national scientific projects and tasks such as: The State-level key science and technology program serving the sustainable development of the Northwest region, the task of building the National Geographical Register of Vietnam, the Project of translating and promoting the quintessence of Eastern classics, the Project of the Vietnam Studies Documentation Center, etc.
Scientists of VNU have contributed ideas to the drafting of many Resolutions and documents of Party Congresses at all levels; promoted new scientific trends, implemented research programs of great stature, of great contemporary, national and humanistic values, of high scientific and practical significance for the development of society, the country and global issues such as climate change and world fluctuations after the Covid-19 pandemic. The development strategy of VNU is to follow the model of a research university and innovation. To date, VNU has 36 research groups that have been recognized as strong research groups at VNU level, playing a leading role in many scientific fields and advanced research directions in the country and the region. Under the leadership of leading scientists, the research groups have played an important role in training talents for students, in the direction of individualization, while promoting international publications and innovation activities.
VNU has developed a plan for the system of scientific and technological organizations and has plans to invest in developing strong research organizations. VNU is one of the leading units in the country in terms of quantity and quality of scientific works with the rate of publications in the Scopus category increasing by an average of 16%/year and accounting for about 10% of the total number of international publications in the country. The number of publications in the WoS/SCOPUS category of VNU has increased gradually over the periods. Over the past 30 years, VNU staff, lecturers, researchers and students have published 11,477 works/articles indexed by the Scopus and Web of Science databases; There are 26,394 authors participating in the research; The average number of citations is ~ 15/work; There are 108 scientific and technological products that have been granted exclusive patents/utility solutions.
In the trend of development in both breadth and depth, with the support of relevant agencies, VNU will accept Ha Tinh University as a member university, upgrading it to become a training and research center of VNU in the Central region to implement science and technology programs to attract investment, develop the economy and society of coastal provinces, and implement cooperation projects with neighboring countries such as Laos and Cambodia.
VNU always focuses on promoting cooperation with businesses and localities, contributing to solving the problem of socio-economic development in implementing state-level scientific programs and regional and local development. In addition to continuing to implement VNU-level science and technology programs such as the Digital Economy Program, Artificial Intelligence Program, Basic Science Development Program in the fields of Chemistry, Life Sciences, Earth Sciences and Marine Sciences. In 2023, VNU will continue to participate in developing national-level research programs such as the Semiconductor Chip Program, Hydrogen Fuel, Biotechnology, Medicine and Pharmacy, Marine Sciences, Health Sciences, etc.

Cooperation is a characteristic of the research and innovation university model. VNU has signed cooperation documents with many ministries, branches, and economic groups; effectively operated the public-private partnership model to enhance the effectiveness of training and contribute to the successful implementation of many important scientific and technological cooperation tasks. In the previous period, VNU successfully piloted many models of affiliated faculties, affiliated research centers, etc. The School of Business and Management (HSB) model is typical of cooperation between VNU and enterprises. VNU has established and developed cooperative units to support startups and knowledge transfer; developed science and technology enterprises and spin-off enterprises.
In recent years, VNU has continued to pioneer in investment promotion and public-private partnership. The investment promotion conference of VNU has attracted the attention of many businesses and created different values ​​by promoting the role of cooperation between universities and businesses to develop human resources. In December 2023, VNU inaugurated two public-private partnership training and research centers with RMIT University in technology and SHB Bank in finance... In the coming years, VNU is assigned to pioneer public-private partnership (PPP) with utility projects, conference centers, hospitals, technology transaction centers, medicinal herb trade centers, culture, arts, sports...
Director Le Quan believes that in the near future, VNU in Hoa Lac will truly be a place for large enterprises to be present and a place to support and incubate small and medium enterprises, science & technology enterprises, social enterprises, etc.

To date, VNU has established cooperative relationships with over 320 universities, international science & technology organizations and multinational corporations.
In 2018, VNU was ranked for the first time in the top 1,000 universities in the world according to the QS rankings and continued to maintain its No. 1 ranking in Vietnam. Up to now, VNU has continuously developed and consolidated its ranking position on prestigious international rankings, always maintaining its position in the top 1,000 universities in the world. In 2022, VNU became the first university in Vietnam to win the QS Quality Improvement Award with 6 fields ranked from 350-600 in the world. In 2023, 8 fields of VNU will be in the top 1,000 in THE rankings among the world's 10 ranked fields, ranked in the 401-600 group of world universities according to the criteria of THE Impact Rankings, in which the Education Quality Index reaches 70th place in the world (5th in Southeast Asia and 1st in Vietnam).
Scientists of VNU in some fields are also internationally ranked among the most influential scientists in the world and in Vietnam. These successes of VNU not only affirm the success of the National University model, but also contribute to affirming the policies and guidelines for comprehensive innovation of higher education of the Party and State.

In harmony with the national aspirations, inheriting and continuing 117 years of heroic tradition, shouldering national responsibilities, VNU looks towards the future with very clear strategies and goals, with two important new factors affecting all activities of VNU in the current context: university autonomy and infrastructure development.
Regarding the construction of the VNU Urban Area in Hoa Lac, it is smart, modern, sustainable, and on par with the region, striving to have 25,000 students by 2025 and aiming to reach an urban scale of 100,000 people with 80,000 students and about 10,000 lecturers and staff by 2030, being an innovation center associated with businesses. VNU is determined to become the core center of Hoa Lac City in the capital city of Hanoi.
Regarding staff development, in addition to maintaining the tradition of nurturing and nurturing talents, VNU focuses on attracting talents with a flexible and effective mechanism according to the motto of creating an environment for excellent scientists to maximize their professional capacity, aiming for quality and valuable works and making practical contributions to socio-economic development.
Regarding training, quality is the core value and motto for activities at VNU. VNU attaches importance to discovering and nurturing talents, considering training in basic sciences/training of experts/scientists/university lecturers as a fundamental task; promoting training in engineering, technology, creativity, and arts (engineering and technology sector reaches nearly 30%); promoting applied and practical training; focusing on training according to international standards. At the same time, the goal is to educate students comprehensively - good at expertise, with integration capacity, understanding of culture, national traditions and especially improving physical strength and fitness.
Regarding scientific research and innovation, VNU continues to promote the strength of cooperation with provinces in the Northwest region in parallel with promoting cooperation activities associated with coastal provinces to promote socio-economic development in coastal areas; more strongly connect with investors and businesses in key economic regions. In that process, accepting Ha Tinh University as a member university will create more conditions to promote transfer research associated with the marine economy and promote cooperation with neighboring countries Laos and Cambodia.
Deserving of many noble awards bestowed by the Party and State
The sustainable and strong development of VNU has always been recognized and cared for by the leaders of the Party, State and Government. During that journey, many member units of VNU have been awarded the title of Hero of Labor and other noble titles of the Party and State. VNU was honored to receive the Gold Star Order in 2006 - on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the Indochina University - the predecessor of VNU, along with many other noble titles of the Party and State over the past time.
Most recently, at the 8th Conference, the 13th Party Central Committee issued Resolution No. 45 on building and promoting the role of intellectuals to meet the requirements of rapid and sustainable national development in the new period. Accordingly, the Party and State are determined to focus on building breakthrough mechanisms and policies and investing resources to develop VNU on par with advanced countries, with sufficient capacity and conditions to play a pivotal role in training, research and bring VNU into the group of the top 500 universities in the world. In recognition of VNU's outstanding achievements in contributing to the cause of building socialism and defending the Fatherland, on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the Government's Decree on VNU and 117 years of tradition, the President decided to award the First Class Labor Medal to VNU.
Within the framework of the celebration, the leaders of VNU awarded the Medal "For the development of VNU" to 162 individuals to recognize and express gratitude to individuals inside and outside VNU who have made outstanding achievements and contributions to the construction and development of VNU over the past 30 years.