Technology Trends at the VANG Leadership Conference

Friday, May 5, 2006

St. Francis Hotel, San Francisco

The VACETS (Vietnamese Association for Computing, Engineering, Technology, and Science) took the occasion of the VANG Leadership Conference to hold their 7th Technical International Conference. 

The topic of the panel, Technology Trends, was moderated by Prof. Christopher Hoang Pham of San Jose State University and Cisco Systems (the president-elect of VACETS), and Dr. Tuan Nguyen of the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, which is part of the University of California.  Dr. Tri Tran, the president of VACETS, also officiated. 

The first speaker, Dr. Xuong Nguyen-Huu, is a Professor Emeritus in the Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry, Physics and Biology at UC Diego. He is a pioneer of protein crystallography technology,”Xuong’s X-Ray Machine”( which can be used to find drugs to kill deadly viruses such as HIV (the AIDS virus), Polio etc..). “Polio is coming back!” he told the audience. Protein crystallography is also used in aggressive investigation of a drug for SARS.  Dr. Xuong is working with others on a new method to detect 3D structures of Biological Macromolecules.  
Dr. Xuong founded Boat People SOS, which sent rescue ships onto the South China Sea to pick up drifting 
Boat People, in 1980-1990. In addition to organizing rescue ships, Boat People SOS and Medecin du Monde 
served as transnational organizations to raise money for refugee assistance and publish documentaries and books to raise awareness about Vietnamese refugees.

The second speaker, Dr. Hai V. Tran, was a refugee from Communist Vietnam in 1979.  He was then a high school teacher in Hue who lost his job because his father had been in the Army of the Republic of Vietnam.  He obtained a job on the docks for three years, and then took the opportunity to stow away on a Greek merchant ship.  After discovery, the captain admired the young man’s spirit and resourcefulness, and helped him to obtain a legal refugee status in the United States after landing in Italy.  He had previously tried Asian countries that accepted Vietnamese refugees to no avail.  Learning that Tran V. Hai had no relatives in the US, he was denied entry until sponsored by the Catholic Charities organization.

 After his arrival in Baltimore in 1980, the young man told the audience he was faced with two choices:  to get a job on the docks as he had in Vietnam, or start over with education (his earlier BA from Hue University was in Education and Linguistics)  to become a teacher in the US by earning BS, MS, and Ph.D. in electrical engineering and computer science.  Hai Tran decided to follow his dream of teaching (which he still pursues as an adjunct professor of Engineering) but his career has been that of Director of Computing and Telecommunications at the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) in Washington D.C.   His technology talk centered on the social implications of national policies, such as biometrics – going far beyond fingerprints at identifying people.  “What about privacy issues?” he asked.  “Where and how are surveillance communication systems used?”  He also spoke of changing methods of warfare, providing communication devices for “a smaller, more nimble, army.”

 The third speaker was Dr. Tue H. Nguyen, Director of Pharmaceutical Development at Genentech, Inc. in South San Francisco.  After his early training in Pharmacy in Saigon, RVN, he came to the US [in 1975?] and earned an MS at St. John’s University in New York and a Ph.D. in Pharmaceutical Chemistry from the University of Kansas, Lawrence. 

 The third speaker was Dr. Tue H. Nguyen, Director of Pharmaceutical Development at Genentech, Inc. in South San Francisco. After his early training in Pharmacy in Saigon, RVN, he came to the US in 1975 and earned an MS at St. John’s University in New York and a Ph.D. in Pharmaceutical Chemistry from the University of Kansas, Lawrence.

 Dr. Tue spoke of antibody as a new class of cancer-fighting drugs. Antibodies are proteins produced by our own body to fight diseases. Thus, this approach really imitates our own immune defense system. He also spoke of the work on recombinant DNA technology “that have obviated the need for animal and organ collection”.

Biotechnology enables us to manufacture large amounts of proteins for large scale clinical testing and commercialization. While Dr. Tue drew a laugh when he admitted business enterprise was the only way to get rich in America, he told the audience of some of the high costs of clinical testings – averaging tens of million dollars just for a single trial.

The final presenter was Dr. Hoang Pham, Professor and Director of the Undergraduate Program in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Rutgers University in New Jersey and an IEEE Fellow. He, always wanted to become a teacher when he was young, came to the US in 1980 and earned five degrees by 1989 includes BS in Computer Science and BS in Mathematical Statistics both at Northeastern Illinois University, an MS in Statistics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, MS and Ph.D in Industrial Engineering at the State University of New York at Buffalo.

Dr. Hoang spoke of the need for Internet education in the information-age society because 70% of US households have Internet Access and estimated about 90% by 2015.  He also spoke of the current need for reliability research in biometric includes fingerprint, eye scan, hand geometry and voice recognition.  Dr. Hoang finally spoke of the need for creating a new mathematical numbering system for telephones and Social Security numbers, because the ten-number telephones and nine-number system will be used up by 2025.

The founding members of VACETS (in 1994) include: Mr. Thao Mong Le, Dr. Thong Tran and Dr. Hoang Viet-Dzung. Dr. Thong Tran is the first President of VACETS.

 

 Jean Libby, editor

Viet-Am Review

revised 12/2006

Thank you, Ken Lee for corrections.