
Hanoi (VNA) – Prof. Dr Nguyen Thanh Liem and DrNguyen Thi Hiep have been named in a list of the top 100 scientists in Asiarecently released by Singapore’s Asian Scientist magazine.
Nguyen Thanh Liem is former Director of theVietnam National Children’s Hospital and currently Director of the VinmecResearch Institute of Stem Cell and Gene Technology.
As a leading pediatric endoscopic surgeon, hewas the first in Vietnam to perform a laparoscopic surgery on a child in 1997and also the first to carry out kidney and liver transplantations in children’shospitals of the country. He has invented nine new techniques and successfullydeveloped and applied them to laparoscopic surgeries on children.
In 2014, the scientist and his colleagues beganresearching into stem cell transplantation, a completely new field in Vietnam.He was also the first in the country to conduct stem cell transplants to treatcerebral palsy and autism.
In late June 2019, the Human Mutation journalpublished the results of a research on the Vietnamese genome carried out byscientists at the Vinmec Research Institute of Stem Cell and Gene Technology.Liem was in charge of this research.
For his notable medical contributions over morethan 30 years, Liem was awarded the 23rd Nikkei Asia Prize for Science andTechnology in 2018. He was the first Vietnamese to be honoured in this fieldsince the prize debut.

Meanwhile, Nguyen Thi Hiep is a lecturer atInternational University under the Vietnam National University – Ho Chi MinhCity.
With many contributions in terms of biomedicaltechniques, she received the 2018 L’Oréal-UNESCO for Women in ScienceInternational Rising Talent award for developing a smart nanoparticle gel thatcan accelerate tissue regeneration.-VNA