On the evening of December 6, the 2024 VinFuture Grand Prize worth 3 million USD was awarded to 5 individuals. This is also a rare occasion for a representative from the industry to be honored at an international science and technology award – considered the pinnacle stage of the research community.

Dr. Xuedong David Huang – Chief Technology Officer of Zoom Corporation (USA), Fellow of the US National Academy of Engineering, Member of the VinFuture Prize Council – said that the VinFuture Prize is a great milestone to honor the deep learning revolution.

The world’s leading expert on AI asserts that deep learning is a step forward for humanity, achieved thanks to three factors. First is the deep learning algorithm. This is the problem that Professors Geoffrey Hinton, Yann LeCun and Yoshua Bengio have been researching tirelessly to push the boundaries.

Dr. Xuedong David Huang also believes that algorithms alone are not enough. The deep learning revolution that the world is witnessing requires a huge amount of data and an accelerated computing platform (GPU). Therefore, this year’s VinFuture Grand Prize also honors Prof. Fei-Fei Li, who made fundamental contributions to ImageNet and its accompanying dataset.

In particular, Dr. Huang highly appreciated the contribution of Mr. Jensen Huang – the pioneer who brought the power of GPU to the whole community.

“The contribution of Nvidia CEO is extremely important for the explosion of the deep learning revolution,” Dr. Huang emphasized.

Sharing the same view, Prof. Soumitra Dutta, Oxford University (UK), member of the VinFuture Prize Council, assessed that AI is a field that has exploded in the past decade. This year’s VinFuture Prize was awarded to the individuals who created that “explosion”.

According to him, VinFuture not only honors outstanding minds, but also does something important by recognizing that deep learning is more than just algorithms. Deep learning is the crystallization of algorithms, data, and hardware.

“Without the pioneering resources from NVIDIA, computational applications would not be able to run, and would not be able to produce the extraordinary calculations or predictions and the rapid development of AI that we have witnessed,” analyzed Professor Soumitra Dutta.

Having served as a member of the VinFuture Prize Council for 4 years, Prof. Kostya S. Novoselov, University of Manchester (UK), admitted that deciding on the winning project is a difficult process. It is never the sole decision of one person. With this year’s Grand Prize, the VinFuture Prize Council has achieved a high level of consensus to make the right decision to honor the technology that has changed the world in recent times.

“Without the combined power of computing, modern GPUs and TPUs, databases and specific algorithms, such an achievement would not have been possible,” the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics winner explained his “yes vote” for entrepreneur Jensen Huang.

Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh presents the VinFuture Prize 2024 to five scientists.

VinFuture – Fair, comprehensive and different awards

As the person who directly nominated NVIDIA CEO, Professor Monica Lam (Stanford University, USA), also realized that her nomination was “a bit different from the norm”. She said that nominating hardware experts was a way to recognize the outstanding contributions of the technology industry. Nobel has honored people doing research on AI, but for AI to achieve such a profound impact, it is impossible without hardware.

According to Professor Lam, the commercial success of businessman Jensen Huang is a clear demonstration of the importance of putting science into practice.

“VinFuture is famous for its fair recognition of all, not just outstanding individuals, which is why I nominated NVIDIA CEO,” Prof. Lam revealed.

Meanwhile, Professor Richard Henry Friend – Chairman of the VinFuture Prize Council – once pointed out a new “abnormality” that has appeared in the past 50 years. That is the tendency to separate those working in industry from those who only do research. According to him, for the world to function well, it is necessary to connect both.

In fact, after 4 seasons, VinFuture has demonstrated its superior vision and different approach in evaluating research comprehensively, in a multidimensional relationship instead of just honoring individual studies. In season 1, the research that won the Grand Prize included two elements, mRNA and lipid nanoparticles, both of which are necessary to create mRNA vaccines. In 2022, with Global Network Technology, VinFuture not only honors software or protocols but also recognizes the importance of infrastructure and information transmission capabilities.

Similarly, the VinFuture 2023 Grand Prize will not be awarded to individual solar cell or lithium-ion battery inventions. Instead, VinFuture will honor a combination of inventions that create a sustainable foundation for green energy. And in the 2024 edition, honoring a technology billionaire along with leading researchers continues to affirm VinFuture’s distinct vision.

“The unique lens that VinFuture uses to identify projects that can benefit millions of people around the world makes VinFuture unlike any other award,” said the 2010 Millennium Technology Prize winner.