441 nominated for prof., assoc. prof. titles in 2019

The State Council for Professorship presents certificates recognising new professors and associate professors. (Photo: VNA)

Hanoi (VNA) – The State Council for Professorship (SCP) has announced a list of 441 nominees for professor and associate professor titles this year.

The nomination dossiers have been submitted to the SCP by 26 sectoral and inter-sectoral councils of professorship.

Of the list, 83 are nominated as professors and the rest, associate professors.

Notably, Assoc. Prof, Dr. of Sci. Pham Duc Chinh from the Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology’s Institute of Mechanics is exceptionally nominated as a professor though he does not meet all requirements.

He has not led the compilation of any textbook for undergraduate education and higher as stipulated in Clause 5, Article 5, of the Prime Minister’s Decision No.37/2018/QD/TTg, dated August 31, 2018, on standards and procedures for recognition of accreditation and appointment to professor or associate professor titles.

However, Chinh won the Ta Quang Buu Award 2019, an annual prestigious award hosted by the Ministry of Science and Technology, for his study on “Consistent limited kinematic hardening plasticity theory and path-independent shake-down theorems” in May. The work was published by the International Journal of Mechanical Sciences.

Chinh, born in 1958 in Nam Dinh, followed higher education in Belarus, the former Soviet Union, where he and his foreign instructor had many articles published on journals.

He received a Humboldt scholarship (Aachen, Germany) in 1999 and Fulbright scholarship (Princeton, the US) in 2002.

Presently he is the Chair of the Science Council of the Institute.  He has been awarded the research scholarships: Humboldt (Aachen, Germany, 1999), and Fulbright (Princeton, the US, 2002).  His research fields include “Micromechanics and homogenization” and “Shakedown and plastic collapse of structures”, with over 100 ISI scientific articles published.

With the contributions in the research field “Shakedown and plastic collapse of structures”, he has been invited to write the chapters on the field for “Encyclopedia of Tribology” (Springer: NewYork, 2013), and “Encyclopedia of Continuum Mechanics” (Springer: Berlin, Heidenberg, to appear).
    
The council for professorship in Chemistry and Food Technology has the largest number of title-seekers, including seven professor and 45 associate professor nominees. It is followed by the physics council (43 nominees) which has the highest number of professor candidates, at 11.

Only two – one professor and one associate professor – in psychology are nominated this year while there are no candidates in the fields of transport, education, law and linguistics.

This year, the candidates’ average age is lower than the previous year’s. The youngest among them are Le Phuoc Cuong from the University of Science and Technology, the University of Da Nang, Nguyen Thi Phuong from the University of Transport Technology and Pham Quoc Cuong and Dao Nguyen Khoi from the University of Science, the Vietnam National University Ho Chi Minh City, who are all 34 years old.

The 69-year-old former lecturer Nguyen Ngoc Thach at the Vietnam Institute of Meteorology, Hydrology and Climate Change is the oldest candidate.

The professor and associate professor nominations dropped in 2019 after the number increased sharply in 2017. A total of 1,226 people were appointed, including 85 professors and 1,141 associate professors in 2017.

The numbers only totalled 703 in 2016 and 522 in 2015.

The number of appointed professors and associate professors in 2017 was believed to be the highest within the four decades since the State started to grant the title of professors and associate professors. It has called into question the quality of professors and associate professors in Vietnam.

Shortly after the list was announced, 41 people have been removed as they were found to lack required qualifications. The move came after the SCP conducted a full-scale revision of the list following Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc’s order./.