Associate Professor Dr. Hoang Chi Thiem, 45 years old, won the Lecture Award for Young Astronomers Worldwide from Central Taiwan University and Delta Electronics Corporation.
Associate Professor Thiem currently works at the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Research Institute and Korea University of Science and Technology. He is the first Vietnamese person and the fourth person working in Asia to win this award.
The lecture award for young astronomers (NCU-DELTA Young Astronomer Lectureship Award) is held annually, starting from 2012 for 1 – 2 scientists under 45 years old, regardless of nationality or ethnicity. The award is nominated, evaluated and awarded by an international council of leading scientists in the field of astronomy and astrophysics.
Associate Professor Thiem in Korea in 2024. Photo: NVCC
Share with VnExpress from Korea, Associate Professor Thiem said he was surprised to receive notice from the award committee for not preparing the award documents. He said this is recognition from the award committee and the scientific community for the achievements obtained in nearly 20 years of research in the field of dust and space magnetic fields by him and his colleagues. “This is a great motivation for me to continue to explore and research in this field, contributing to clarifying the origin of stars, planets and life in the universe,” Associate Professor Thiem said.
The award committee assessed that Associate Professor Thiem has a deep academic background and rich research experience. He achieved many outstanding achievements in fields such as cosmic dust, the birth of stars and planet formation. His research has deepened the community’s understanding of interstellar matter and the evolution of planetary systems in the universe, and has made important contributions to the study of the microwave universe.
The research of Associate Professor Thiem and his colleagues has contributed to solving a major problem in astrophysics that has existed for nearly 70 years, which is the orientation process of dust particles in the interstellar medium that causes polarization. of light from distant stars. The team has successfully constructed a unified quantitative theory to describe and predict the orientation of dust particles in a magnetic field, based on radiation torque and supermagnetic relaxation. From this theory, the team developed a physical model to simulate light polarization due to absorption and emission of dust.
The physics-based polarization models of dust developed by the team are now the basis for using polarization data obtained from the world’s most modern telescopes such as ALMA, SMA, JCMT, SOFIA and Planck to Research the role of magnetic fields and dust in the formation of stars, planets and galaxy evolution.
Recently, Associate Professor Thiem and his colleagues developed a new technique to measure three-dimensional magnetic fields by combining the unified orientation theory developed by the group with observational data, contributing to clarifying the role of magnetic fields in the process of forming stars and planets. In particular, in 2019, the team discovered a new physical mechanism that causes dust particles to break up due to centrifugal force when they rotate super fast under the influence of radiation torque. This new mechanism was published in the prestigious journal Nature Astronomy. The research has helped answer questions about the evolution of matter in intense radiation environments around stars, supernova explosions and supermassive black holes.
In October 2022, Associate Professor Thiem was also the first Vietnamese to receive the Science Award from the Korean Astronomical Society for his 10-year contributions to the industry. He was also recently honored by Tatler Asia magazine as one of the 100 most influential Vietnamese people in Asia in 2024. Associate Professor Thiem regularly returns to Vietnam to participate in academic and training activities for young people, Students love astronomy.
Associate Professor Hoang Chi Thiem is a senior researcher at the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASI), and an Associate Professor at Korea University of Science and Technology. He received his doctorate from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA in 2012, then received an award for postdoctoral research from the Canadian Institute of Theoretical Astrophysics and the Humboldt Foundation (Germany). His main research direction is on dust and magnetic fields in the universe.
In July 2022, Associate Professor Thiem and two scientists, Dr. Nguyen Trong Hien (NASA, USA, team leader) and Dr. Nguyen Luong Quang (American University, in Paris, France) established the Astrophysics Group (SAGI). . The group operates under the management of the IFIRSE Institute for Interdisciplinary Scientific Research and Education, affiliated with ICISE (Quy Nhon, Binh Dinh), where Professor Tran Thanh Van presides over building the desire to become a common home for researchers. science. SAGI was established with the goal of contributing to the development of astrophysics in Vietnam.