Prime Minister Le Minh Hung urged Vietnam National University-Ho Chi Minh City (VNU-HCM) to become the country's leading hub for finding, training and retaining top talent. He said the university needed a continuous pipeline from outstanding undergraduates and postgraduates to young scientists and senior experts, especially in basic sciences and strategic technologies.
Addressing VNU-HCM's 2026 academic opening ceremony in Ho Chi Minh City on October 13, the Prime Minister praised the achievements of the university's leaders, officials, scientists, lecturers, staff and students over 31 years.
He said the university should build on that record, set bolder goals, change its approach to governance and foster an academic culture that rewards creativity and judges performance by results.
VNU-HCM should become a leading national hub for education and training, scientific research, science and technology, innovation and digital transformation. It should aim to rank among Asia's top 100 higher education institutions by 2030 and among the region's leading research university systems by 2045. At least four disciplines should rank among the world's top 50.
The Prime Minister also called for faster adoption of modern university governance. VNU-HCM, he said, should be a trusted destination where talent can work at full capacity and build long-term careers.
He said VNU-HCM should act as an intellectual hub and a source of policy advice and critique, providing reliable scientific evidence for policymaking at national, regional and local levels. The university should take the initiative in studying emerging practical problems and proposing solutions, carrying knowledge from lecture halls and laboratories into policy, development models, governance and living standards.
Education, research and innovation should be integrated into one chain. In emerging fields such as semiconductors, quantum technology and aerospace, the university should bring in Vietnamese and foreign experts and companies while maintaining strict quality standards.
The Prime Minister said VNU-HCM should take responsibility for mastering strategic technologies and avoid spreading resources too thin. It should move beyond publishing papers to identify the technologies it must master, the products it should build, who will use them and when results should arrive. It should also build in-house technological capacity, develop core technologies and produce competitive products under Vietnamese brands.
The university should connect the State, other universities and businesses, bring resources together, build meaningful international partnerships and refine policies that speed up technology transfer and the commercialisation of research. The aim is to advance Vietnam's science, technology and innovation in key fields and help the country rank among upper-middle-income economies by 2030.
The Prime Minister asked the Ministry of Education and Training to urgently draft a project with strong investment policies and special mechanisms to develop elite universities modelled on world-class research universities and train national talent. He called for greater decentralisation and more authority for national universities over governance models, organisational structures, new disciplines, training methods, and the recruitment and use of talent and resources, with accountability, transparency and independent evaluation.
He also called for VNU-HCM, Vietnam National University-Hanoi and Hanoi University of Science and Technology to be developed as hubs of a research, development and innovation ecosystem.
The Ministry of Science and Technology, working with the Ministry of Finance, was tasked with studying a mechanism for lump-sum funding packages for science, technology and innovation at public science and technology organisations affiliated with key universities. The ministries were also asked to refine policies that close the gap between laboratories and the market for research results.
The Government directed the Ho Chi Minh City People's Committee and localities in the southeast and the Mekong Delta to study ways to commission VNU-HCM directly and help fund shared infrastructure. Such support should help train qualified personnel and produce research projects and science and technology products needed by the regions.
The Prime Minister presented gifts to participants in the 500-day campaign to accelerate the search for, recovery and identification of fallen soldiers' remains.
VNU-HCM also honoured individuals and groups that have won prestigious domestic and international awards and titles since the beginning of 2026, as well as those with outstanding achievements in inventions, publications and applied research.
Businesses and partners pledged more than 160 billion VND (6.15 million USD) to the university.
In the near term, VNU-HCM will prioritise research with early application potential for businesses, hospitals and local authorities in artificial intelligence, edge chips, biological products and molecular diagnostics.
By 2030, the university plans to establish research clusters and public-private laboratories focused on Vietnamese large language models, vaccines and cell technologies, energy storage batteries, green hydrogen and quantum technologies. After 2030, it aims to build self-reliance in advanced fields, including sovereign AI, 6G chips, aerospace technologies, precision medicine and nuclear power.
Its 2030 targets include 100 international patents, 10 strategic technology products, 15 mastered core technologies and 20 strong research groups. These targets are intended to consolidate its place among Asia's leading universities.
Earlier, the Prime Minister toured the Made by VNU-HCM exhibition of science, technology and innovation work by the university's researchers.
The exhibition featured a four-legged firefighting robot, a brain-computer interface system, an AI application supporting assisted reproduction, semiconductor chips, products made from indigenous medicinal herbs, stem cell technology, microneedle patches and next-generation solar cells.
Source: VNA
Sources: VietnamPlus / Vietnam News Agency
