Dr. Thai-Ha Le is the Managing Director of the VinFuture Foundation and the “For Green Future” Foundation (Vingroup). She holds a Bachelor of Arts (Hons) and a Ph.D. in Economics from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, where she completed her Ph.D. within two years at the age of 24. Prior to joining the VinFuture Foundation, Dr. Le served as the Director of Research and a Senior Faculty member at the Fulbright School of Public Policy and Management, Fulbright University Vietnam, for nearly three years, and was a tenured Senior Lecturer at RMIT University Vietnam for seven years. Her primary research fields include energy economics, environmental economics, and applied economics.

Dr. Le is an active researcher, having published around 80 scholarly articles in international, peer-reviewed journals such as Energy Economics, The Energy Journal, Energy Policy, Renewable Energy, Resources Policy, Economic Modelling, International Review of Financial Analysis, Empirical Economics, Annals of Operations Research, Applied Economics, and Australian Tax Forum.

According to rankings by experts from Stanford University published in PLOS Biology in 2021 and Elsevier in 2022, 2023, and 2024, Dr. Le is among the world’s top 1% most influential scientists across all scientific fields and is the only Vietnamese female researcher based in Vietnam to be included in this ranking.

Dr. Le has also consulted for The World Bank, UNDP, the Asian Development Bank (ADB), and the Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia (ERIA). She has received multiple competitive research grants and fellowships, including the Pacific Trade and Development (PAFTAD) Fellowship for Young Scholars in 2013, the Public Diplomacy Federal Assistance Award from the U.S. Consulate General in Ho Chi Minh City and Vietnam’s Public Affairs Section in 2018, and the National Foundation for Science and Technology Development (NAFOSTED) grants for research in social sciences and humanities in 2019 and 2021 as the principal investigator.

Dr. Le serves as a judge in the Business and Economics category of the Global Undergraduate Awards, under the patronage of the President of Ireland, Michael D. Higgins. She has also been an external reviewer for the Vici Social Sciences and Humanities programme under the NWO Talent Programme, part of the Dutch Research Council (NWO). Additionally, she is the youngest (and the only female) member of the scientific committee in economics for the 2022-2024 term of NAFOSTED and the Ta Quang Buu Prize (under Vietnam’s Ministry of Science and Technology), as well as the inaugural Khuê Văn Các Prize for young talent in social sciences and humanities (2024) awarded by the Ho Chi Minh Communist Youth Union.

Dr. Le was the founding Editor-in-Chief of the Fulbright Review of Economics and Policy and holds associate editor roles with several other scholarly journals, including the Journal of Economic Asymmetries (Elsevier), Journal of Economic Development (sponsored by the National Research Foundation of Korea), Singapore Economic Review (one of the oldest and most respected economics journals in the Asia-Pacific region), and Springer New Monograph Series: New Frontiers in Regional Science: Asian Perspectives (Springer Nature).