Most first approaches go to the wrong person. Institutional pages list directors, deans and heads of department — and in Vietnamese institutions, those roles are frequently administrative.
The person running the actual research is often two levels down and does not appear on the English-language page at all.
How to find who actually does the work
- Start from recent publications, not from institutional websites.
- Look at the corresponding author — this is usually the person running the project.
- Check who appears repeatedly across a group's output over three years.
- Vietnamese-language publications reveal groups that are invisible in international indexes.
- Conference proceedings in the region show active people who publish less internationally.
Understanding where research capacity sits
- National universities and academies concentrate the largest groups.
- Specialised institutes often hold deep expertise in narrow applied fields.
- Regional universities may have strong individuals without strong infrastructure.
- Capacity is distributed unevenly and does not track institutional prestige closely.
Making the first contact
- Write to one specific person, not to a general address.
- Reference a specific paper of theirs and say what interested you.
- Be concrete about what you propose — vague expressions of interest get vague replies.
- State clearly what you bring and what you need.
- Keep it under three hundred words.
Reading the reply
- Enthusiastic agreement in a first email does not yet mean commitment.
- Ask directly about capacity, timeline and existing obligations.
- A video call resolves in twenty minutes what email takes three weeks to clarify.
- Silence usually means workload, not disinterest.
Before committing
- Ask what infrastructure exists and what would need to be built.
- Ask who else has worked with them internationally, and speak to those people.
- Understand their institution's approval requirements early.
- Visit if you can — one visit tells you more than a year of correspondence.
One thing worth remembering
Start from publications, not from institutional org charts.
The org chart tells you who holds authority. The publication record tells you who does the work. In collaborations these are frequently different people, and approaching the wrong one costs you months of polite, well-intentioned correspondence that leads nowhere.
Câu hỏi thường gặp
Why not start from institutional websites?
Because they list directors and heads of department, and in Vietnamese institutions those roles are frequently administrative — the person running the research is often two levels down.
How do you find who actually does the work?
Start from recent publications, look at the corresponding author, check who appears repeatedly across three years of a group's output, and look at Vietnamese-language publications and regional proceedings.
What makes a good first contact?
Write to one specific person, reference a specific paper of theirs, be concrete about what you propose, state what you bring and what you need, and keep it under three hundred words.
How should you read the first reply?
Enthusiastic agreement does not yet mean commitment — ask directly about capacity, timeline and existing obligations, and use a video call to resolve in twenty minutes what email takes weeks to clarify.
What should you check before committing?
What infrastructure exists and what would need building, who else has worked with them internationally, their institution's approval requirements, and ideally visit in person.
