Vu Ha Chau, a Vietnamese student at Pomona College in California, U.S. Photo courtesy of Pomona College
A Vietnamese student at Pomona College in California has been named one of just eight nationwide winners of a top U.S. computing research award, after co-authoring a paper ranked in the top 1% globally.
Vu Ha Chau is the first student in Pomona College’s history to receive the CRA Outstanding Undergraduate Researcher Award, the school announced earlier this month. The recognition comes from the Computing Research Association (CRA), which represents nearly 300 computing research institutions across North America.
The award recognizes exceptional undergraduate contributions to computer science. Each winner receives up to US$1,500 to support attendance at a research conference.
A native of Hanoi, Chau studied at the Foreign Language Specialized School under Vietnam National University before enrolling at Pomona in 2022 on a merit scholarship.
She focuses on Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), a field that explores how people interact with technology and how systems can be designed around real human needs.
Her research has already earned international recognition. Chau co-authored a paper that received a Best Paper Award (top 1%) at the ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST), one of the leading global conferences in interface innovation.
She was also the first author of a paper that earned an Honorable Mention (top 5%) at the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI), the world’s premier conference on human-centered computing.
According to CRA, this year’s awardees demonstrated significant advances spanning both theoretical research and real-world applications.
Beyond academic publications, Chau has interned at Microsoft and co-founded VieSign, a platform that supports learning Vietnamese sign language.
Her senior thesis project, called PianoSense, explores a multisensory system designed to support remote piano instruction. The system combines a haptic glove, which provides tactile feedback, with 3D hand modeling to help students learn technique even at a distance.
“I always want to maintain the balance of building something that’s cool and creative but also grounded in real users’ needs,” Chau said in a statement published by Pomona College.
Comments are closed.