With their dedication, great efforts, innovation and scientific research, many young people in Da Nang have significantly contributed to the development of Da Nang.

Vo Duc Anh, Deputy Director of the Da Nang Innovation Startup Support Center: Infusing passion and enthusiasm for innovation entrepreneurship

The Da Nang Innovation Startup Support Center has operated for more than 1.5 years. Together with the center's staff, Vo Duc Anh has made suggestions about a number of innovative startup programmes and activities in the city, achieving some positive results. In particular, he directly advised the implementation of the Da Nang Startup and Innovation Festival (SURF) 2022 in November 2022 - the city’s biggest festival for the local startup community as well as partners inside and outside the city.

At the same time, he has built and put into operation the Da Nang Innovation Startup Portal. This is considered a startup ecosystem in the digital space that exists in parallel with the real-world startup ecosystem, thereby greatly contributing to overcoming the spatial and geographical distance to connect entrepreneurs, investors and experts.

In 2022, Mr. Vo Duc Anh was honoured to be assigned the task of Head of the Metaverse Village by the Department of Market Development and Science and Technology Enterprise, the Ministry of Science and Technology, and the Organising Board of Techfest 2022.

To date, on the national startup ecosystem with 34 villages, Vo Duc Anh is the second person in the city to be assigned the role of village head.

Metaverse Village was formed and oriented to become a national gateway for organisations and individuals such as managers, researchers and investment funds at home and abroad to support start-ups. It is expected that by 2030, the market size will be about US$1 trillion in a narrow sense.

Although the Metaverse Village has just been put into operation, it has hosted a number of seminars to support Metaverse technology for localities such as Son La, Nghe An, Dong Nai and Da Nang.

In Da Nang, Metaverse technology has been put into application in tourism services, investment promotion, and real estate. Besides, the Metaverse Village has organised national competitions to seek startup talents in the Metaverse field, and typical faces for the national startup ecosystem; as well as collaborated with the city to organise a dialogue on innovation in the public sector, in which experts introduced the interactive model of government and citizens in the virtual universe, the model of Dubai and South Korea to suggest for the city government to have more pioneering new technology applications and better serve people.

Being able to join the Metaverse village, Vo Duc Anh expressed that it is a personal pride and honour as well as a great responsibility and an important bridge between the Da Nang startup ecosystem and the national and international ones.

With his great contributions to the city's start-up and innovation activities, Mr. Vo Duc Anh said that, above all tasks, it is also passion and enthusiasm.

“When we can help other people start their own businesses, those get helped will help other people. In particular, entrepreneurship and innovation are always looking for new things, contributing to a better society. That means a lot to me,” Vo Duc Anh shared.

Dr. Nguyen Thanh Dat, Lecturer in Banking Faculty, the Da Nang University of Economics; an expert of the University’s Board of Science, Technology and Environment; Secretary of the Ho Chi Minh Communist Youth Union organization of the University of Da Nang: Never stop researching, doing scientific research

Dr. Nguyen Thanh Dat is the main author and co-author of 25 works published in prestigious national and international journals. Currently, he is in the top 50 economic researchers in Viet Nam according to the ranking of the economic research project RePec (Research Papers in Economics).

The lecturer's scientific research is partly due to the mandatory work, but for Dr. Nguyen Thanh Dat, above all, it is the need for himself because knowledge is constantly new and endless.

For him, scientific research is also a form of inspiration for students to learn, because they see that their teachers constantly learn and accumulate knowledge, they will follow. Therefore, each year, the profile of this lecturer is always updated from two to three research works.

Unlike technical studies, it is possible to immediately see products and economic research works that need time to verify and many works of the same genre for comparison and reference. Therefore, in each of his research works, Dr. Dat must carefully read the original documents in English, then from practice find new methods and directions to explain phenomena and events occurring in a new economy.

Research results can provide explanations and suggestions for investors and policy makers. “Research takes up a lot of time, but I think if there is a method, it can still be solved. I feel quite lucky because I have many domestic and foreign collaborators who work well together, so the research works are going smoothly,” said Dr. Dat.

In his research, Dr. Dat is interested in the activities of banks; at the same time, he also has a presentation report on the solution to build Da Nang into a regional financial center.

Aside from teaching and scientific research, Nguyen Thanh Dat has been enthusiastic, responsible and energetic in many years. He called on union members to promote volunteerism and participate in volunteer activities for the community. He is one of three teachers in Da Nang who has been honoured with the Central-level Outstanding Young Teacher Award for the third time.

Tran Thi Thanh Loan, Director of the Retex Technology JSC: Pioneering in digital transformation

Tran Thi Thanh Loan expresses her wish that Da Nang is not only a worth-living city but a ‘city of startup dreams’. And Retex has realised her dream of starting a business.

After working in the textiles and garment sector, Loan realised the difficulties and limits in production management of textiles and garment enterprises. In particular, they fail to manage the number and working efficiency of the staff; quantity of goods and raw materials, the quality of products, and the number of customers.

From those concerns, Thanh Loan always cherished an idea with the application of technology to help textile enterprises easily manage and be transparent in the production process, thereby saving costs, reducing work load and improving production capacity in the industrial revolution 4.0.

In 2019, Loan and her friend Nguyen Van Thuat, 32, co-founded Retex - A real-time production management platform with the expectation of contributing to the digital transformation of the garment industry and creating new smart factories.

Retex, the abbreviation of English is Revolution Textile, means "textile revolution". Retex is designed and developed entirely on the cloud computing technology platform, and it is connected to the Internet. The Retex platform combined with IOTS devices creates smart factories with the purpose of helping textile enterprises to easily manage and transparently in the production process.

Till date, Retex has been successfully applied in 68 textiles enterprises, including the Viet Nam Textile and Garment Group Vinatex based in Da Nang, the Phu Tuong Garment Company Limited in Quang Nam Province, the Thien An Phuc Textile Investment JSC in Hue, and more than 100 small-sized businesses across the country.

Overcoming more than 500 digital transformation solutions, Retex was selected as the Best National Digital Transformation Solution for Enterprises in 2022. The platform was honoured by Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh at the awards ceremony held on the National Digital Transformation Day (October 10, 2022).

Tran Dai Lam, Specialist of General Office of the municipal People's Committee: Efforts to Dedicate Youth

Tran Dai Lam has just been awarded the "Ninth National Excellent Young Civil Servant" award by the Central Youth Union in 2022. This is a worthy reward for the dedication of a young civil servant who is diligent and active in advising and proposing initiatives to perform well the assigned tasks.

In mid-2019, Tran Dai Lam transferred from the Da Nang Institute for Socio-Economic Development Research to the General Office of the municipal People's Committee with the task of a general consultant.

Despite being in a new environment, with diligence and hard work, he actively learned from the experience of his predecessors to quickly approach work. The image of Lam staying at the office until late at night and all weekends became familiar to many colleagues.

Not only doing well the assigned tasks, Lam also proposed many initiatives to help his unit and the city improve work efficiency.

Besides professional work, he also actively participates in writing articles and research topics in the field of government building and state management, as well as cultural and sports activities, and charity activities.

For Lam, dedication is a voluntary and self-conscious contribution of strength, talent, and wisdom to the common good.

Nguyen Ngoc Phuong Thao, a pupil from the Le Quy Don Senior High School for the Gifted: Confident with great ambition

Nguyen Ngoc Phuong Thao is not too strange to other pupils citywide because of her remarkable academic achievements and her activeness in Youth Union activities.

Phuong Thao is the youngest delegate at the 19^th National Congress of the Ho Chi Minh Communist Youth Union for the 2022-2027 tenue.

This great honour is not an overnight achievement, but a combination of talent, youth, dedication and relentless efforts.

Since she was in junior high school, Thao was twice named on the international gold board with the first prizes in the Wecode programming category at the international Robothon and WeCode competitions in 2018 and 2019.

During her studying at the Le Quy Don Senior High School for the Gifted, Phuong Thao continued to make an impression with the first prize in Biology at the city level and ranked second among 15 comprehensive excellent students at the city level in 2020.

Besides this admirable academic achievement, Thao is very active in Youth Union activities.

Currently, Phuong Thao is active in the development of a health monitoring software and a scientific diet for people who want to gain and lose weight.

Despite being in school, the girl has set many great goals by herself. According to Phuong Thao, young people must always be in a proactive state, ready to dedicate and respond to all situations, especially in activities for the community.

“My immediate desire is to get a scholarship to study abroad. If successful, I will take another step in my goal - learn the good things of the world to bring back to contribute to the city, and the country as a whole" Thao expressed.

Reporting by N.HA, X.DUNG, T.HUY, T.PHUONG - Translating by M.DUNG