Ho Chi Minh City (VNA) - Prime Minister Le Minh Hung has urged the Vietnam National University-Ho Chi Minh City (VNU-HCM) to become the country’s leading hub for finding, training and retaining top talent, with a continuous pipeline running from outstanding undergraduates and postgraduates to young scientists and senior experts, especially in basic sciences and strategic technologies.
Addressing the university’s 2026 academic opening ceremony in Ho Chi Minh City on October 13, PM Hung praised 31 years of achievements made by its leaders, officials, scientists, lecturers, staff and students.
He said the university should build on its record, set bolder goals, overhaul how it thinks and is governed, and foster an academic culture that rewards creativity and judges performance by results.
VNU-HCM should become a leading national hub for education - training, scientific research, science -technology, innovation and digital transformation, striving to rank among Asia’s top 100 higher education establishments by 2030 and one of the region’s leading research university systems by 2045, with at least four disciplines in the global top 50.
The PM also pressed for faster adoption of modern university governance. The VNU-HCM must become a trusted destination where talent can work at full capacity and build long-term careers, he said.
He wants VNU-HCM to act as an intellectual hub and a source of policy advice and critique, supplying reliable scientific evidence for national, regional and local policymaking. It should take the initiative in studying emerging practical problems and proposing solutions, carrying knowledge from lecture halls and labs into policy, development models, governance and living standards.
Education, research and innovation should be integrated into a single chain. In emerging fields such as semiconductors, quantum technology and aerospace, the university should bring in domestic and foreign experts and companies while holding output to strict quality standards.
In his view, the VNU-HCM should take responsibility for mastering strategic technologies and avoid spreading resources too thin. It should move beyond publishing papers to specify which technologies it must master, which products to build, who will use them, and when results will arrive. It should also gradually build in-house technological capacity, develop core technologies and produce competitive products under Vietnamese brands.
The university should act as a bridge between the State, other universities, and businesses, bringing resources together, boosting meaningful international partnerships, and fine-tuning policies that accelerate technology transfer and the commercialisation of research. The aim is to elevate Vietnam’s science, technology, and innovation to advanced levels in key fields and position the country among the top upper-middle-income economies by 2030.
On the occasion, the PM asked the Ministry of Education and Training to urgently draft a project setting out strong investment policies and special breakthrough mechanisms to develop elite universities modeled on world-class research universities and train national talent. He called for greater decentralisation and delegation of authority to national universities over governance models, organisational structures, new disciplines, training methods, and recruitment and use of talent and resources, paired 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 into 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 sci-tech bodies affiliated with key universities. It was also asked to refine policies that close the gap between labs and the market for research results.
The Government leader 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 for the university. Such support will help train qualified personnel and produce research projects and sci-tech products that localities and the region need.
He presented gifts to participants in the 500-day campaign to accelerate the search for, recovery, and identification of martyrs’ remains.
The VNU-HCM also honoured individuals and groups that have won prestigious domestic and international awards and titles since the start of 2026, along with those with outstanding achievements in inventions, publications and applied research.
Businesses and partners pledged more than 160 billion VND (6.15 million USD) for the university.
In the near term, the VNU-HCM will prioritise research with early application potential for firms, hospitals and localities in AI, edge chips, biological products and molecular diagnostics.
By 2030, it plans to set up research clusters and public-private labs focused on Vietnamese large language models, vaccines and cell technologies, energy storage batteries, green hydrogen and quantum technologies. After 2030, the university aims to build self-reliance in advanced fields, including sovereign AI, 6G chips, aerospace technologies, precision medicine and nuclear power.
Its 2030 targets are 100 international patents, 10 strategic technology products, 15 mastered core technologies and 20 strong research groups, consolidating its place among Asia’s leading universities.
Earlier, the PM toured the “Made by VNU-HCM” exhibition of science, technology and innovation work by the university’s researchers.
On display were a four-legged firefighting robot, a brain-computer interface system, an AI app supporting assisted reproduction, semiconductor chips, products made from indigenous medicinal herbs, stem cell technology, microneedle patches and next-generation solar cells./.
VNA