On December 14, the 2019 Golden Globe Awards committee announced the ten winners. Among them was Dr. Tran Nguyen Hai, a DTU scientist, for his work in Environmental Science. The award is presented to academics under 35 years old with outstanding achievements in their studies and research. Dr. Tran Nguyen Hai is also an editorial board member for twelve international journals indexed by ISI and Scopus. He chose to return to Vietnam from abroad and works with dedication and passion. Let’s listen to what he has to say about his award and his research in Vietnam.
Reporter: From the 45 original submissions, you went on to the online voting round of 20 contestants and then became one of the ten young and talented people to receive a Golden Globe Award. How do you feel now!
Dr. Tran Nguyen Hai: The distinguished Golden Globe Awards for talented young scientists are presented annually by the Ho Chi Minh Communist Youth Union Central Committee and the Ministry of Science and Technology, and the quality of submissions is markedly higher each year. In 2019, the twenty selected candidates published exceptionally high quality and a high volume of papers. To win an award requires much hard work but it is a joy and an honor to receive an award. Maintaining my value and fame is now even more difficult, so I must continue to dedicate myself to my science and Vietnam by publishing more papers in journals relating to my field and applying my research to the practical everyday lives of ordinary people.
Dr. Tran Nguyen Hai with an arsenic groundwater filter at the Hoang Tay kindergarten in Kim Bang district, Ha Nam Province
Reporter: With candidates working in Vietnam, the UK, Canada and Denmark, all with impressive achievements in studies and research, your own work must be particularly special and outstanding?
Dr. Tran Nguyen Hai: You can be certain that all of the ten winners are impressive leaders in their fields. Personally, I’m very confident in my research after years of hard work and put quality at the forefront. This is reflected in my ranking in the highest Q1 bracket of my expertise, at 60% according to WoS, and my citation count of over one thousand, according to Scopus. I’m currently working to expand my international collaborations and have established a group of professors and associate professors from countries like Australia, South Korea, Turkey, Brazil, Iran, South-Africa, Belarus and Algeria to share ideas and produce research results to benefit everyday life all over the world.
I’m particularly fond of and enjoy my colleagues’ interest in some of my papers, including “Mistakes and inconsistencies regarding adsorption of contaminants from aqueous solutions: A critical review” published in the journal Water Research in 2017 and cited 360 times, currently at second place in the top of most cited papers in the journal. Also “Thermodynamic parameters of cadmium adsorption onto orange peel calculated from various methods: A comparison study”, which the Journal of Environmental Chemical Engineering selected as one of the eight most notable papers on the subject of water treatment through adsorption, cited 145 times, one of the highest in the journal.
Reporter: The 2019 Golden Globe Awards included an online voting round. Does this increase the quality of the selection process?
Dr. Tran Nguyen Hai: The committee announced that online voting would be used to make the community more aware of the awards. Before selecting the twenty candidates eligible for the online vote, the council carefully evaluated each paper and participants were then allowed to modify them. The council then convened to carefully evaluate and select the final ten winners. I was very satisfied with their approach but have two suggestions. In the future, I believe that the organizers should firstly give more detailed guidance on the journal classifications from Q1 to Q4, according to Web of Science or Scimago, and, secondly, identify the candidates as first authors or associate authors.
Dr. Tran Nguyen Hai, an editorial board member for twelve international journals indexed by ISI and Scopus
Reporter: You are very passionate about your research and achievements and you are also an editorial board member of twelve international journals. What can you tell us about your work as an editor?
Dr. Tran Nguyen Hai: It’s a great honor to be a member of the editorial team of a prestigious international journal and candidates must be experts in their field, who enjoy the recognition of the scientific community in their respective fields and demonstrated by the quality and quality of their papers and numbers of citations received. The candidates must also have journal refereeing experience and are normally invited to work by the publisher or the editor-in-chief, or introduced by other experts in their field. They may also submit their resumes to the editor-in-chief, which is my preferred approach.
Journals that I’m currently editing for include “Water Science and Technology”, published by the International Water Association, and Springer’s “Current Pollution Reports”. These journals have stringent requirements on submissions to reflect their quality and prestige. The number of submissions increases year-by-year, with rejection rates usually fluctuating from 50% to 80%, with the editorial board working impartially to decide. Manuscripts without new research content, insufficient data or badly written are sent back. I’ll selectively invite six to eight experts to evaluate each paper and, after receiving at least two reports guaranteeing the required quality from independent reviewers, I’ll decide whether to give the author an opportunity to revise their paper, or reject it.
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Dr. Tran Nguyen Hai’s citation count and h-index, according to Scopus, influenced the Journal of Environmental Chemical Engineering to selected his paper as one of the eight with largest impact in the field of water treatment using adsorption technology.
Reporter: Much Environmental research is being conducted at DTU. What can you tell us about yours?
Dr. Tran Nguyen Hai: I came to DTU with the expectation of a dynamic, new environment that encourages scientists to use their capabilities to the full and discovered that DTU invests heavily in research and appropriate remuneration for scientists who publish, such as myself. My work here includes being Project Leader of the “General research into advanced composite materials, spherical carbon and layered double hydroxides, for the treatment of polluted water” project, funded by the National Foundation for Science and Technology Development, (NAFOSTED). Our main objective is to develop advanced materials that can alleviate water pollution.
M previous work “Laterite as a low-cost adsorbent in a sustainable decentralized filtration system to remove arsenic from groundwater in Vietnam”, was published in the leading journal “Science of the Total Environment”, and has been implemented in Vietnam. We installed an arsenic water filter using natural, low cost and abundant local materials, with a capacity of 500 L/h, at the Hoang Tay kindergarten in Ha Nam Province. Research results showed that the arsenic content in groundwater at the site fluctuated between 112 μg/L and 237 μg/L, exceeding the international WHO standard of 10 μg/L. After filtration, however, that level fell to between 1.69 μg/L and 9.50 μg/L. The laterite in the filter is designed to operate for six months, with a throughput of 240 m³ of treated water at a price of 2,000 VND/m³. This quality also meets the QCVN 01:2009/BYT standard for drinking water.
This technology has been adopted by a manufacturer of small-scale arsenic water treatment systems, at a price of 2m VND for a filter for households, schools or hospitals. In reality, ammonium and arsenic also usually occur in groundwater in quite high concentrations. The second phase of the project will therefore continue to investigate ways to treat ammonium and arsenic in groundwater simultaneously through adsorption. This project is underway and I hope to contribute my knowledge to the reduction of pollution in Vietnam and improving the lives of ordinary people here.
Reporter: Thank you for your interesting responses.
(Media Center)