Ph.D. Student
Leistungen
My foundation in technology was built in Vietnam, where I combined academic achievement with student leadership and hands-on engineering. Today, as a PhD candidate at the University of California, San Diego, I develop methods to make realistic 3D recordings easier to store and share, with experience taking research into working implementations at Apple.
At Hanoi University of Science and Technology (HUST), I graduated first in my class and within the top 1% of my school, with a GPA of 3.67/4.0. I received five academic excellence scholarships, first prize in a university student research competition, the 2019 HONDA Young Engineer and Scientist Award, and Vietnam’s 2019 Outstanding Female Student in Science and Technology award.
Beyond academics, I served on student leadership and volunteer committees and the management board of the student research club. I helped plan technology and coding courses attended by approximately 100 students, alongside student events and community activities. These contributions were complemented by national-level “Student with Five Good Merits” recognition.
I led a four-person team developing a smart-agriculture system, coordinating responsibilities around our different technical strengths. I developed the Android application and directed the demonstration. The project received second prize and the audience-favorite product award at BEST PROJECT 2017, with FPT Software providing financial support toward development costs.
My doctoral research addresses the enormous data requirements of moving 3D recordings. The objective resembles video compression on a phone, but for content capturing a person’s shape and movement in three dimensions. I developed a new motion representation that uses a small set of control points to describe movement despite inconsistencies between scanned frames. My complete compression system achieved average bitrate savings of 58.43% over the tested reference at comparable reconstruction quality. This work was published in IEEE Transactions on Multimedia in 2026. I also conduct perceptual research to improve how the visual quality of 3D content is evaluated.
During my 2026 research internship at Apple, I proposed an encoder optimization for 3D Gaussian Splat compression that improved efficiency without requiring decoder changes. The work formed the basis of an invention disclosure. I also integrated a decoder into visionOS and built tools to evaluate its performance on Apple Vision Pro.
I expect to graduate in December 2026. Alongside research, I have served as a teaching assistant for three quarters in Digital Signal Processing and Digital Image Processing, mentored high-school students, and helped my advisors mentor junior PhD students.
Grund der Nominierung
I am putting myself forward for this award because I have demonstrated the ability to originate a technical idea, develop it into a working system, and contribute beyond my individual research.
My doctoral work establishes my capacity for independent innovation. My experience at Apple extends that evidence: I contributed a compression optimization that became the basis of an invention disclosure, alongside implementation and evaluation on a real device. Together, these achievements reflect the ability to work through both the conceptual questions and practical details needed to make progress in technology.
I also bring experience making collaboration productive. Leading a student engineering team taught me to recognize different strengths, coordinate responsibilities, and communicate our work to people outside the project. Helping organize technology courses and student activities gave me another way to contribute: creating opportunities for others to participate and learn. Teaching and mentoring remain part of my work today.
What I hope the judges recognize is the progression across these experiences. The initiative I developed as a student in Vietnam has grown into the technical depth and judgment needed for advanced research and industry engineering. My achievements are supported by publications, working implementations, national recognition, and contributions to student communities.
As I complete my doctorate, I want to share this experience with Vietnam’s technology community, particularly the process of developing ideas, evaluating them carefully, and translating them into practical use. I would be honored to receive this award in recognition of my contributions so far and my potential to contribute further through engineering, collaboration, and mentoring.
Vorstellung
Hoang Le Dieu Huong is recognized for original contributions to 3D media technology, academic excellence, and her commitment to helping others learn and build.
A PhD candidate at UC San Diego, she developed a new way to represent movement in realistic 3D recordings, substantially reducing the data needed to store and transmit them. During her research internship at Apple, she contributed a compression innovation that formed the basis of an invention disclosure and implemented technology on Apple Vision Pro.
Her achievements build on a foundation established in Vietnam, where she received the HONDA Young Engineer and Scientist Award, the Outstanding Female Student in Science and Technology award, and national-level “Student with Five Good Merits” recognition for achievement across academics, ethics, fitness, volunteering, and international integration.
Alongside research, she has led an award-winning student engineering team, helped organize technical courses, and contributed through teaching and mentoring. Her record demonstrates both the ability to turn original ideas into working technology and the initiative to create opportunities for others.
Inspirierende Geschichte
As an undergraduate in Vietnam, I loved being involved. I enjoyed organizing activities, bringing people together, entering competitions, and seeing a team’s work become something we could demonstrate. There was usually a next event, a deadline, or a result to look forward to. I was proud of what I was achieving, and I cared deeply about how others saw me.
Doctoral study challenged that familiar way of measuring myself.
Living abroad and working on open-ended research, I encountered problems that did not yield to effort on a predictable schedule. An experiment could fail after weeks of work. I could be busy without feeling that I was moving forward. Far from family and familiar sources of encouragement, I had to confront fears that achievement had previously helped me avoid.
Over time, I began to separate the outcome of my work from my worth as a person. I learned to ask for help, tolerate uncertainty, and think more carefully about the life and work I wanted, rather than only how they would appear to others. That change did not make me less ambitious. It gave my ambition a more personal foundation.
I still love technology and the moment when an idea finally works. I also understand more clearly what can happen before that moment: doubt, mistakes, patient effort, and support from other people.
This is a perspective I hope to share with younger students, especially women considering advanced technical careers. I want to share the knowledge I have gained from research and industry, but also be honest about the journey. They do not need to feel confident all the time to belong in engineering. They can ask questions, seek support, and build a career that reflects their own interests and values.
