Overcoming challenges and difficulties when approaching the technology field, female students of the University of Da Nang (UD) have gained encouraging achievements. Notably, some of them sought berths in a list of the 20 most outstanding female students in the field of science and technology nationwide in 2021.

Student Thai Thi Thu Loan (second, left) won the second prize of the DUTPC Programming Contest in the Central region 2020. (Photo taken during the absence of COVID-19).

The high determination to pursue a career that is by default "for men" is a shared characteristic of Thai Thi Thu Loan, a fourth-year student of the Faculty of Information Technology, University of Science and Technology (DUT), and Pham Vu Thu Nguyet, a third-year student of the Faculty of Computer Science, Viet Nam - Korea University of Information and Communication Technology (VKU).

When Thu Loan was in high school years, she actively participated in programming contests, algorithm competitions or tried to write simple and popular game programs. Becoming a tertiary student, this girl has continued to participate in competitive programming competitions at a higher level, requiring participants to master algorithmic expertise as well as high programming speed.

Thanks to her efforts, Thu Loan won the second prize of the CodeWar contest 2018 and the DUTPC contest 2020, entered the final of the DUTPC contest 2021 organized by the Faculty of Information Technology, DUT. She also wrote highly applicable software such as a face matching system for anti-cheating in exams, a system to manage volunteer activities.

On the other hand, Pham Vu Thu Nguyet's original intention was to pursue general medicine. However, after reading many scientific documents, she realized that the traditional health care industry in Viet Nam still has many limitations and technology will help our nation's health sector access scientific achievements, so Nguyet decided to turn her academic path. The change in career intentions made it difficult for her to spend most of her time learning basic computer knowledge and new technology directions to have a specific orientation about the way ahead.

So far, Nguyet has won numerous technology awards such as the First and Second Prizes at the Student Conference for Scientific Research at the school level, the champion of the programming contest "Best Website Design 2021", the second prize of the contest ‘GBA Business Challenge 2020’ with the aim of searching for startup ideas.  She is also an official member of the school's ACM/ICPC team - Vietnamese Student Informatics Olympiad.

In the upcoming time, Nguyet cherishes to develop a medical ecosystem including applications of artificial intelligence in the detection and classification of diseases. The ecosystem includes technology to process X-ray images and test blood, urine and then upload them to a Blockchain database (a decentralized database that stores encrypted information) for everyone can access. This comes from her dream to be a doctor and she will use the power of technology to be able to save lives.

Meanwhile, student Thai Thi Thu Loan intends to go to Japan - one of the developed countries in science - technology to work and learn more after graduating from university and return to dedicate herself to her homeland Da Nang. “I am especially interested in medicine and education. I hope I can combine my passion with my technical knowledge to create a host of software contributing to the digital transformation process in this field since it will reduce time, costs and unnecessary resources as the present," Thu Loan said.

Reporting by NGOC HA- Translating by T.VY