VAST’s Science and Technology Development Fund signs a Memorandum of Understanding on cooperation with the Belarusian Republican Foundation for Fundamental Research. — VNA/VNS Photo Tâm Hằng

HÀ NỘI — Professor, Academician Châu Văn Minh, President of the Việt Nam Academy of Science and Technology (VAST), and Vladimir Karanik, Chairman of the Presidium of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus (NASB), have co-chaired a seminar to explore directions to promote bilateral cooperation in science and technology in a new phase.

The event took place on the occasion of Minh’s attendance at the 38th meeting of the International Association of Academies of Sciences (IAAS) Council held in Belarus on Wednesday.

Impressed by Việt Nam's development achievements, Karanik emphasised that this progress needs a strong scientific and technological foundation to continue driving forward. He expressed his confidence that both academies will continue to build upon their successful collaboration in basic research and expand into technology research and development - a task that the Belarusian Prime Minister has assigned to the NASB.

Minh reviewed more than 50 years of scientific cooperation between Việt Nam and Belarus, particularly since the agreement in 2007 with the Belarusian Republican Foundation for Fundamental Research. Over 100 collaborative tasks have been implemented, most of which were directly between the VAST and NASB, achieving high effectiveness with an average of 1.5 international publications per task.

In addition to traditional fields such as materials science, semiconductors, laser, optics, biodiversity conservation, and water treatment, both sides agreed to expand into new areas such as space technology and Earth observation, biomedical science and nuclear medicine, and drones.

The VAST recognises that the NASB possesses many technologies with high transfer potential, and thus the VAST can act as a bridge to bring the NASB’s technologies, and Belarus’s innovations more broadly, to Vietnamese enterprises and localities.

VAST Vice President Professor, Academician Lê Trường Giang proposed the Belarusian Republican Foundation for Fundamental Research provide support and share its experience in fund management, and fund international research groups, international laboratories, interdisciplinary research, and studies with high potential for application.

To establish a legal foundation for cooperation, the VAST Science and Technology Development Fund has signed three cooperation agreements: one with the NASB on the development of joint research teams, another with the Belarusian Republican Foundation for Fundamental Research on the exchange of fund management experience and joint activity funding, and another with the NASB’s Republican Unitary Enterprise "Research and Production Centre for Multifunctional Unmanned Systems".

On this occasion, the VAST delegation also visited and worked with the Republican Unitary Enterprise "Research and Production Centre for Multifunctional Unmanned Systems" to discuss research and development on unmanned aerial systems. They also met with the NASB Institute of Applied Physics to explore cooperation in the field of semiconductors. — VNA/VNS