To Dong Anh Khoa: Redefining success through technology that serves people

As a child, To Dong Anh Khoa worked hard to collect as many certificates as possible, eager to earn his parents’ recognition. Years later, his determination to excel remains, but his definition of success has changed.

“The greatest recognition I could receive today is seeing something I created genuinely help someone in real life. Now preparing to graduate from VinUniversity, Khoa no longer measures success by personal achievements alone. To him, the true value of an engineer lies in recognizing real-life challenges, finding meaningful solutions, and turning technology into something that improves people’s lives.

Finding the right problem before building the solution

Khoa’s four years at VinUni have given him more than technical knowledge. They have reshaped his understanding of what it means to be an engineer.

Throughout his journey, he met peers and senior students pursuing different ambitions and paths. Yet many of them shared the same aspiration: to use their abilities to address challenges that matter.

Being part of this community helped Khoa see that engineering goes far beyond formulas, designs, and complex systems. An engineer may be able to solve highly difficult technical problems, but the more important question is whether those problems are truly worth solving and whose lives could be improved by the answer.

“VinUni has not only equipped us with the skills to overcome challenges, but also helped me recognize the problems that truly matter.” This perspective has become central to Khoa’s approach to research. Rather than pursuing technology simply because it is novel or technically sophisticated, he wants to begin with genuine human needs and work towards solutions that can move beyond the laboratory.

Turning an aspiration into a tangible solution

One project that reflects this approach is the “Jellyfish-Inspired Soft Hydraulic Compression System for Deep Vein Thrombosis Treatment,” developed by Khoa under the supervision of Dr. Thai Mai Thanh, Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering at VinUni. Inspired by the hydrostatic skeleton of jellyfish, the system incorporates soft hydraulic actuators into a flexible wearable brace, delivering adaptive, rhythmic compression to the lower limbs. The solution is designed to support the prevention and long-term management of deep vein thrombosis in both clinical and home-based settings. Behind the technical concept lies a concern that Khoa hopes to address: although many biomedical products and assistive devices already exist, they remain inaccessible to some users because of their cost, bulkiness, or limitations in long-term, everyday use.

To Khoa, technology can only achieve its full impact when the people who need it are able to use it in real life.  The project was later presented at the Workshop on Bioinspired and Biohybrid Systems, part of the 2025 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2025). Khoa received a Student Grant from the organizers, and his work was selected as a finalist for the Best Poster Award alongside research from MIT, Oxford, UCL, and UNSW.  For Khoa, this milestone represented more than academic recognition. It demonstrated how a question rooted in a real-world need could evolve into a concrete research direction with the potential to contribute to healthcare.

Bringing technology closer to the people it serves

After graduation, Khoa hopes to continue developing biomedical products that are effective, safe, and more affordable. He is particularly interested in bio-inspired design and soft robotics fields that could lead to flexible devices that interact more naturally with the human body and support a wider range of applications in mobility assistance, treatment, and rehabilitation. This direction is not entirely unexpected.

Growing up, Khoa was fascinated by wildlife programmes and once dreamed of becoming a zoologist. Although he eventually chose engineering, his curiosity about nature never disappeared. Instead, it took on a new form: observing the structures and mechanisms refined by nature over thousands of years of evolution and translating them into ideas for new technologies.

In that sense, Khoa’s childhood dream has not truly ended. His desire to explore the natural world has evolved into a commitment to learn from nature and develop products that serve people.

As he puts on his graduation gown this year, Khoa knows that the road ahead will not always follow a clear plan. Yet he also believes that uncertainty is precisely why young people must be willing to take risks, explore unfamiliar paths, and keep learning.

“You never know what you do not know. So be brave enough to take risks. Even in the worst-case scenario, you will still learn something.”

After four years at VinUni, Khoa does not claim to have all the answers. What he carries forward is a clearer sense of the engineer he hopes to become: someone who is not only capable of creating technology, but also attentive enough to see the human needs behind every problem.

The jellyfish-inspired soft robotics project marks an important milestone in that journey. Yet what defines Khoa is not a single research project or international recognition. It is the process of turning curiosity into action and transforming a desire to create impact into a tangible solution.

That is also the spirit of a Future Maker: not simply imagining the future, but beginning to shape it through real-world challenges and the value technology can create for people.

“The child in this photo once dreamed of exploring the natural world. Today, I am turning that curiosity into nature-inspired technologies that help build a better future for people.”