Associate Professor Hoàng Chí Thiêm, 45 years old, has been awarded the Young Astronomer Lectureship Award by National Central University of Taiwan and Delta Electronics.
Currently, Professor Thiêm works at the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute and the Korea University of Science and Technology. He is the first Vietnamese and the fourth individual working in Asia to receive this award.
The Young Astronomer Lectureship Award (NCU-DELTA Young Astronomer Lectureship Award) is held annually, starting from 2012, to honor 1 – 2 scientists under the age of 45, regardless of nationality or ethnicity. The award is nominated, evaluated, and selected by an international council of leading scientists in the fields of astronomy and astrophysics.
Professor Thiêm in South Korea in 2024. (Photo: NVCC).
In an interview from South Korea, Professor Thiêm expressed surprise upon receiving the notification from the award council as he had not submitted an application for the award. He stated that this recognition from the council and the scientific community acknowledges the achievements obtained over nearly 20 years of research in the fields of cosmic dust and magnetic fields with his colleagues. “This is a great motivation for me to continue exploring and researching this field, contributing to clarifying the origins of stars, planets, and life in the universe,” Professor Thiêm remarked.
The award committee assessed Professor Thiêm’s deep academic background and rich research experience. He has achieved many outstanding accomplishments in areas such as cosmic dust, the birth of stars, and planetary formation. His research has deepened the community’s understanding of interstellar matter and the evolution of planetary systems in the universe, while also making significant contributions to microwave cosmology research.
Professor Thiêm and his colleagues’ research has helped solve a significant problem in astrophysics that has persisted for nearly 70 years, which is the alignment process of dust particles in the interstellar environment causing the polarization of light from distant stars. The team successfully developed a unified quantitative theory to describe and predict the orientation of dust particles in magnetic fields, based on radiation torque and super-paramagnetic recovery. From this theory, they developed a physical model to simulate the light polarization caused by the absorption and emission of dust.
The polarization models based on the dust physics developed by the team are now foundational for utilizing polarized data obtained from the world’s most advanced telescopes such as ALMA, SMA, JCMT, SOFIA, and Planck to study the roles of magnetic fields and dust in the processes of star and planet formation and the evolution of galaxies.
Recently, Professor Thiêm and his colleagues have developed a new technique to measure three-dimensional magnetic fields by combining their unified orientation theory with observational data, contributing to clarifying the role of magnetic fields in the formation of stars and planets. Notably, in 2019, the team discovered a new physical mechanism causing the disruption of dust particles by centrifugal forces when they rotate at super speeds under the influence of radiation torque. This new mechanism was published in the prestigious journal Nature Astronomy. The research helped answer questions regarding the evolution of matter in strong radiation environments around stars, supernova explosions, and supermassive black holes.
In October 2022, Professor Thiêm was also the first Vietnamese to receive the Science Award from the Korean Astronomy Society for his contributions over a decade to the field. He was recently recognized by Tatler Asia as one of the 100 most influential Vietnamese in Asia in 2024. Professor Thiêm frequently returns to Vietnam to participate in academic activities and train young students interested in astronomy.
Professor Hoàng Chí Thiêm is a senior researcher at the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASI) and an associate professor at the Korea University of Science and Technology. He obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA, in 2012, and subsequently received the award for postdoctoral research from the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics and the Humboldt Foundation (Germany). His main research focus is on dust and magnetic fields in the universe. In July 2022, Professor Thiêm, along with two other scientists, Dr. Nguyễn Trọng Hiền (NASA, USA, team leader) and Dr. Nguyễn Lương Quang (American University, Paris, France), established the Astronomical Physics Group (SAGI). The group operates under the management of the Interdisciplinary Institute for Science and Education (IFIRSE), affiliated with ICISE ( Quy Nhơn, Bình Định), where Professor Trần Thanh Vân leads efforts to create a common home for scientists. SAGI was established with the goal of contributing to the development of astrophysics in Vietnam. |
