A connected research-to-impact portfolio across five challenges — health communication, cybersecurity, inclusive leadership, food systems and climate resilience. Led by RMIT University Vietnam, with government, hospitals, critical-infrastructure operators, industry and farmer cooperatives. Every figure below carries the source it came from.
Completed and externally documented outcomes, 2021–2025. This is what partners have already adopted and extended.
Proposals in preparation or under review, 2025–2027, each already carrying committed partners on paper.
The UN Women project publicly reports US$130,343 and is not shown above, as it is not denominated in A$. Two RMIT internal Tier 2 grants add A$25,000 each.
Six records carry a ranking marked “to confirm” and are excluded from the ranked count.
A floor, not a total: compiled from three team members' profiles, so the true count is higher.
The health figure is the professional network UMC documents, not a session headcount; the two are counted from different bases.
Colour is assigned to each challenge here and used consistently wherever that challenge appears on this page.
Why people verify and share health information, and how clinicians build credible public voice.
Human and organisational conditions behind digital security in SMEs and critical infrastructure.
Gender-responsive CEO capability, benchmarked internationally and fed into national policy.
Smart food-safety management and Web-GIS/AI agriculture, built with cooperatives and extension services.
Humanitarian waste, healthcare waste circularity, and urban heat adaptation across ASEAN.
Roles, appointments and recognition as published on RMIT's own academic profiles. One member is Deputy Dean for Research & Innovation in The Business School and heads RMIT's Centre for Cyber Security Research and Innovation in Vietnam.
Leads research and innovation for The Business School and heads RMIT's Centre for Cyber Security Research and Innovation, Vietnam Hub. His work spans the human and organisational conditions behind cybersecurity, health communication and supply-chain innovation, and he led the DFAT-funded critical-infrastructure capability programme in Vietnam.
Combines computational social science and computer science to study consumer behaviour, digital business transformation, social networks and causal inference on large-scale digital trace data. Published in the Journal of Management Information Systems (FT50, ABDC A*), Computers in Human Behavior and Journal of Services Marketing. Visiting PhD researcher at Carnegie Mellon, 2015–16.
PhD from Kyoto University, Japan, with research in supply-chain risk management, quality and food-safety systems. Previously Purchasing and Warehouse Manager at Nipro Vietnam, a Japanese medical-device manufacturer. Named investigator on the smart food safety, SAMA and land-suitability work with cooperatives and provincial extension services.
Works on natural-resource and environmental management, water-resource modelling, nature-based solutions, climate adaptation and urban resilience — the science side of the urban-heat programmes. Previously taught on the Integrated Water Resources Management masters at TH Köln. PI and co-PI on projects funded by EU Horizon, Germany's BMBF, IDRC Canada, Business Finland and DFAT.
The recurring pathway: research → partnership → train-the-trainer → policy → replication by the partner's own network. The last step is what outlives the grant.
Benchmarking across seven countries, a large-scale survey and a CEO Competency Framework of 18 competencies. Evidence entered the January 2026 national policy consultation on SME-support legislation.
With University Medical Center HCMC and Hue Central Hospital. Grew from 10 sessions to 12 workshops nationwide; later inspired the national Medical Communication Ambassador Awards.
DFAT-funded, delivered with VNISA and VINASME across Hanoi, Hai Phong, Binh Dinh and HCMC. Named participants include EVN, Vietcombank, Vietnam Airlines, ACSV and Hong Ngoc Hospital. Extended into Cambodia in 2025.
Web-GIS/AI system integrating land, soil, water, climate and remote-sensing data, with smartphone-based crop-disease detection. Engages Nutifood, Vinh Long Provincial Agricultural Extension Centre and two farmer cooperatives.
EU Horizon Europe consortium, January 2024 – December 2025. Produced a plug-and-play waste-management framework and a sustainable-procurement platform in nine languages. Community campaign with the Vietnam Red Cross in Khánh Hòa.
Decision-ready evidence on institutional factors shaping adoption of alternative treatment technologies, addressing a Ho Chi Minh City medical-waste system handling roughly 72 tonnes per day.
Contributed to the DFAT-commissioned flagship report and the Vietnam Urban Heat Status report, plus a GEDSI Action Plan.
High-resolution heat mapping for Hanoi, Nakhon Ratchasima and Phnom Penh, with a dedicated gender-equality and inclusion stream on heat exposure among informal workers and migrants.
Every photograph below is published by the programme itself, a consortium partner or a news outlet — not supplied by the team. Hover any image for its source.
A 16-partner consortium across 11 countries, January 2024 – December 2025. It produced sustainability criteria, procurement guidance, field-hospital procedures, a plug-and-play waste-management framework and medical-waste guidance — and a sustainable-procurement platform now live in nine languages including Vietnamese. WORM also contributed to DG ECHO's mapping of life-cycle assessments for humanitarian items.
The first of two urban-heat programmes, delivered under the DFAT Mekong Thought Leadership grant and now complete. It produced the commissioned flagship report, the Vietnam Urban Heat Status report, a GEDSI Action Plan and a technical modelling series. Research on digital twins for urban-heat management entered Vietnamese public and policy discussion.
The second urban-heat programme, still running. High-resolution heat maps have been generated for all three focal cities — Hanoi, Nakhon Ratchasima and Phnom Penh. A dedicated gender-equality and inclusion stream identified disproportionate heat exposure among informal workers, migrants, low-income women, older people and residents of informal settlements. Findings were taken into direct engagement with ASEAN member-state representatives.
Decision-ready evidence on the institutional and organisational factors shaping adoption of alternative treatment technologies, addressing a Ho Chi Minh City medical-waste system handling roughly 72 tonnes per day. Two articles are accepted: one in Business Strategy and the Environment, one in Socio-Economic Planning Sciences.
The urban-heat work is transdisciplinary and multi-campus: it joins STEM (School of Science) with CoBL (The Business School), integrating climate science with governance, urban management and social inclusion across RMIT Vietnam and RMIT Melbourne.
Commissioned and consortium outputs published on partner platforms — the part of the portfolio a funder can verify without asking the team for anything.
With the Vietnam Red Cross and provincial women's and youth unions. Covered independently by Báo Khánh Hòa and VTV — the images below are theirs.
Nine letters of support sit behind these proposals. What they demonstrate is reach across every tier a funder cares about — government, industry, farmer cooperatives, research institutes and hospitals.
| Proposal | Fund | RMIT role | Lead investigator | Letters |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Smart Food Safety Management System | — | Lead | A/Prof Pham Cong Hiep | 4 |
| SAMA — scale-up to provincial deployment | — | Lead | A/Prof Pham Cong Hiep | 2 |
| AI for LSE — climate-resilient land suitability | — | Lead | A/Prof Pham Cong Hiep | 1 |
| From Prototype to Practice — coffee digital hub | — | Lead | A/Prof Pham Cong Hiep | 1 |
| From Doctors to KMOLs — digital credibility & trust | VRG 2027 | Lead | Dr Hoang Ai Phuong | 1 |
Marks below are taken from the letterheads of the letters themselves. Signatures and official seals are deliberately not reproduced.
