Meet the two-time IMO champ who joins Fields Medalist Ngo Bao Chau to shape Vietnam’s math future

Long, 49, is among six internationally renowned Vietnamese mathematicians working at Western universities who have committed to regularly returning home to supervise doctoral candidates.

The initiative, titled “Converging Scholars,” was unveiled on March 6 by Chau, a Fields Medal laureate and scientific director of the Vietnam Institute for Advanced Study in Mathematics, with the aim of cultivating world-class researchers domestically and reducing the outflow of Vietnamese top talent to overseas institutions.

Long’s story traces the arc of a prodigy who fulfilled his early promise, evolving from a teenage standout into an established figure in the global mathematics community.

In the late 1980s, when Vietnam’s presence in international mathematics competitions was still emerging, Professor Chau had set a benchmark, winning consecutive IMO gold medals in 1988 and 1989.

Long stepped onto the same stage several years later, and excelled.

As a student of Vietnam National University’s Hanoi University of Science High School for Gifted Students, he won his first IMO gold medal in Hong Kong in 1994, followed by a second in Canada in 1995, becoming the second Vietnamese to achieve the double-gold distinction and reinforcing the country’s growing reputation in the field.

He continued to pursue advanced mathematics, specializing in commutative algebra and algebraic geometry, disciplines that explore the structural properties of polynomial systems.

He pursued higher education in the United States, earning his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in 2006, before holding research positions at the University of Utah. He later joined the University of Kansas, where he built a long-term academic career.

At Kansas, Long has published more than 100 research papers, focusing on topics such as singularities and local rings. His work has been widely cited, contributing to connections between algebra and geometry.

He is now a full professor at the university’s Department of Mathematics and oversees doctoral training as Director of Graduate Studies.

At the same time, he has maintained close ties to Vietnam as a senior researcher at VIASM, helping link international research with domestic talent.

Professor Dao Hai Long speaks at a meeting as part of the International Conference on Mathematics Research and its Applications held at Nguyen Tat Thanh University in HCMC, August 2025. Photo by the university

Nearly three decades after following in Chau’s footsteps as a student, Long is now returning to work alongside him.

By joining the doctoral training initiative in Vietnam, he is helping to build a system in which future generations of mathematicians can pursue world-class research without leaving the country, transforming a personal journey into a broader national effort.

Among mathematicians joining Professor Chau’s initiative are four based in the U.S.: Nguyen Xuan Long of the University of Michigan, who specializes in machine learning and mathematical statistics; Ha Huy Tai, who chairs the mathematics department at Tulane University; Nguyen Trong Toan of Pennsylvania State University, who works in mathematical physics and fluid dynamics; and Dao Hai Long.

The other two are Ngo Dac Tuan, a researcher at France’s National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), and Phan Thanh Nam, a professor in the Department of Mathematics at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Germany.

Nam made history in 2020 by becoming the first Vietnamese national to be awarded the European Mathematical Society Prize, which is considered one of the most prestigious honors in the field, second only to the Fields Medal awarded by the International Mathematical Union.

Toan received the T. Brooke Benjamin Prize from the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics in 2022.