Hanoi woman wins $420,000 scholarship for AI PhD at Carnegie Mellon, world's second best university for data science

A Hanoi woman has secured a full scholarship worth nearly US$420,000 for five years to do her PhD at Carnegie Mellon University in the U.S. in AI.

Nguyen Vu Thien Trang has been in the residency program at Vingroup's VinAI Artificial Intelligence Application and Research JSC for three years now since graduating from university.

Now, at 24, she will begin her studies in the U.S. in August 2025 and work on her ambition to develop AI technologies that are both user-friendly and capable of safeguarding user privacy and security.


Nguyen Vu Thien Trang in a photo she provides.

Her GPA of 3.89/4, placing her in the top 8% at the Hanoi University of Science and Technology, and numerous international papers qualified her for the full scholarship.

Since early February Trang had been receiving acceptance letters and scholarships for PhD programs in the U.S. and Switzerland, and finally chose the School of Computer Science at CMU.

According to U.S. News, CMU ranks alongside Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford as the top schools in this field in the U.S.

The QS World University Rankings by Subject 2025 put it second after MIT in data science and artificial intelligence training.

"I'm thrilled that my dream has come true, and also a bit nervous because the journey ahead will be full of exciting challenges," Trang says.

Her journey into AI began with a spontaneous decision in her final year of high school.

Despite majoring in English at her high school for the gifted, she chose the Data Science and Artificial Intelligence program at Hanoi University of Science and Technology (HUST) just two weeks before finalizing her university preferences.

She says: "I don't usually plan too far ahead; I tend to seize opportunities as they come. Getting into the program felt like fate to me."

Though her focus had been on English, she had a solid foundation in natural sciences, which made preparing for the entrance exams manageable, she recalls.

Her strong English skills have been a great asset in her studies and research, and she points to the importance of reading and writing proficiency since most AI research papers are written in English.

In her second year of university, Trang joined a research group at the Data Science Lab at HUST.

Her first project — and a personal milestone — involved using a variation of the dropout technique to enhance continual learning models.

After it was completed by the end of 2022, the paper was published in the prestigious Machine Learning journal, with Trang as a co-first author.

"This paper marked my first step into research and taught me many valuable skills," she reflects.

Ngo Van Linh, a lecturer at the School of Information and Communications Technology at HUST, praises Trang for her determination, sharpness and excellent work ethic.

"She made major contributions, from developing the theoretical framework and algorithms to running experiments and writing the paper.

"Later on Trang demonstrated independence and creativity, expanding her research in new directions."

To avoid burnout from juggling studies and research, Trang shifted from working on inspiration alone to having a clear, structured plan.

Besides attending classes and three fixed lab sessions a week, she dedicated evenings to homework and research.

Thanks to this, she graduated in 2023 with distinction.

After graduation she fully immersed herself into research through VinAI’s AI residency program.

The more she worked, the more her passion grew, leading to her decision to pursue a PhD abroad.

Alongside her IELTS score and personal essays, Trang focused on building research experience.

She delved into mixture of experts, a technique that reduces AI model computation costs, and backdoor attacks, which involve subtly poisoning the training data of an AI model, causing it to behave maliciously through specific triggers.

In 2024 alone, she co-authored five papers published at top-tier AI conferences such as NeurIPS, ICLR and AAAI.

Trang believes every part of her application was important, but academic performance and research publications required the longest preparation.

"These are things I was determined to excel in, whether or not I studied abroad."

Ho Pham Minh Nhat, an assistant professor in data science, statistics and machine learning at the University of Texas in Austin, the U.S., who mentored Trang in her research, speaks highly of her proactive, hardworking and creative nature.

"Trang's recent papers have been well received by the AI research community."

Trang say she hopes to further develop her research skills and become an AI expert over the next five years in the U.S.

VietBF@ Sưu tập

Ủa... "Hậu duệ" lũ 3Quặp đâu nhỉ, mà sao để cho em gái Hà Nội làm-trời-làm-đất thế kia. Hay lại phải đầu-hàng-vô-điều-kiện nhỉ. Mẹ kiếp (Chắc phải kéo đại tá Hung CAO ra làm show-off biz nữa rồi).