Vietnamese scientist honored in Japan

Ms. Mai Thi Ngan, 34 years old, is a Vietnamese graduate student. She is studying at Miyazaki University in Japan’s Miyazaki prefecture. She was presented the award in thanks for her research work on developing the isothermal gene multiplication method and the sample adding system in diagnosis of acute diarrhea virus in pig in a simple, accurate and economical manner.

In an interview with reporter from Vietnam News Agency, Ms. Ngan said that control of diseases on cattle and poultry in Vietnam faces many difficulties due to people's awareness and limited funding, along with many another factors. Therefore, when starting the research, she used the current popular testing method called PCR. However, this method requires very high research costs. While she was unable to find the funding for her research activity, she turned to isothermal gene multiplication method.

“This is a very simple method with low cost and very easy to apply in practice. This method can be applied to diagnose many diseases on cattle and poultry caused by other viruses or bacteria," said Ms. Ngan.

Before going to Japan as a graduate student in 2016, Ms. Ngan worked at the Subject of Microbiology-Infectious Diseases, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine under the Vietnam National University of Agriculture. She said that after completing her course at Miyazaki University, she wanted to return to Vietnam to apply her research results to reality and also conduct other research projects.

At the event, Vietnamese Ambassador to Japan Vu Hong Nam congratulated Ms Ngan for being awarded this noble award by AFFRC, and hoped that she would continue to have more other valuable research works for prevention of epidemics on cattle and poultry in Vietnam and Japan./.