(Interview from 2019)

Dagmar Möbius

The chemical engineer completed her doctorate 15 years ago at TU Dresden on methods for improving adhesive strength. Today, Dr. Phung Lan Huong is Head of the External Affairs Office at Hanoi University.

Phung Lan Huong comes from a family of academics in Vietnam. She was born and raised in Hanoi. She began studying chemical engineering at Hanoi University of Science and Technology (HUST) in 1990. Her role model was her mother, who had studied chemistry there between 1966 and 1971, specializing in silicate technology. It is still not the norm in Vietnam for women to study technical subjects. Nonetheless, Dr. Phung Lan Huong says, "In recent years, the number has increased." At HUST, with nearly 35,000 students, the rate is now 23.2 percent. The chemist followed up her engineering degree with a two-year master's degree program, which she completed in 1998. She then went on to teach at the department of chemical engineering.

When the Vietnamese-German Center opened at HUST in 1999, the director of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) and several professors who had studied in Germany advised her to apply for a doctoral scholarship. Professor Uwe Füssel, a joining technology expert at TU Dresden, was running a project with HUST at the time. Phung Lan Huong was awarded a six-month internship scholarship in 2000. In 2001, she began her doctorate at TUD with a three-year scholarship from the Daimler and Benz Foundation. In September 2005, she successfully defended her dissertation at the Chair of Joining Technology. The topic was an interfacial examination of bonded parts and the development of methods to improve adhesive strength ("Grenzflächenuntersuchungen an geklebten Fügeteilen und Entwicklung von Methoden zur Verbesserung der Klebfestigkeit"). Professor Füssel and Professor Kleinert supervised the project.

Prof. Uwe Füssel, who has held the Chair of Joining Technology and Assembly at TU Dresden’s Institute of Manufacturing Science and Engineering within the Faculty of Mechanical Science and Engineering since 1993, began to set up the Vietnamese-German Training and Research Institute in Vietnam in 2001. Dr. Phung Lan Huong is still in regular contact with him and a number of her former peers, and she had many fond memories of the city of Dresden. Her son lived with her in the Saxon capital from when he was three until the age of six.

The fact that more women study technical subjects in Germany than in her home country impressed Dr. Phung Lan Huong. "They also have higher positions in society," she observed, citing German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who studied physics, as an example. "In Vietnam, men's roles are more valued. Women are often housewives or social workers," she says. "Traditionally, women in Vietnam are expected to take care of the housework. They therefore have to work twice as hard as men with the same qualifications." However, she does know many women who studied a technical subject and now hold important positions, such as the former chair of the HUST University Council, who also studied petroleum chemistry.

Phung Lan Huong initially returned to teaching in her field of chemical engineering at HUST upon returning to Vietnam. Then, from 2009 to 2016, she headed "Bach Khoa Publishing House," a partnership established in 2005 under the umbrella of HUST and the Vietnamese Ministry of Information and Communications. The company was working towards the production of electronic textbooks for 40,000 students, with a focus on adaptive learning. Phung Lan Huong served as both director and editor-in-chief.

In November 2019 she took on the role of Head of the External Affairs Office. She had previously spent three years as the Head of administration office  and assistant to the president for internal affairs. One aspect of Dr. Phung Lan Huong's new post is ensuring that cooperation with Germany continues to develop. She would like to see a strong partnership between HUST in Hanoi and TU Dresden. "I am hoping for even more excellent outcomes for academic training and research projects," she explains. And the odds have looked even better since November 2019. At an alumni event in Hanoi, she not only met Prof. Füssel again, but also got to know Katharina Schmitt, Head of the Staff Unit Internationalization, who raved about Phung Lan Huong. "Dr. Huong is a godsend for us. Internationalization is like diplomacy – it relies heavily on mutual understanding and trust. Dr. Huong is not only interested in collaboration, she is also very familiar with TU Dresden. That lays the perfect foundations for future partnership with HUST."

Within her university, Phung Lan Huong also has an excellent network at her disposal. Many Vietnamese alumni of TU Dresden went on to hold leading positions at HUST, for example the former president of HUST, Assoc. Prof. Hoang Minh Son; the head of the Academic Affairs Office, A ssoc.Prof. Nguyen Dac Trung; and the director of the Institute for R&D of Natural Products, Assoc. Prof. Nguyen Minh Tan. Dr. Huong also has a close ally from within her own family: Her husband is a junior professor of chemical engineering and the Head of HUST's Admissions Office.

Contact:
Dr. Phung Lan Huong
Email

Back to the alumni portraits