The Solve for Tomorrow competition and the passion for technology have been actively promoted by Samsung to students across various regions, including remote and rural areas.
Entering its sixth year, the number of participants has grown more than 300 times, reaching over 150,000 students, bringing the total to more than 450,000 participants to date. This impressive figure highlights the program’s strong influence, meaningful impact, and proven quality.
From ideas to social contribution
As technology increasingly shapes all aspects of life, STEM education (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) has become the key for younger generations to foster creativity and problem-solving skills. Samsung’s Solve for Tomorrow serves as an outstanding platform where initial creative ideas are nurtured and developed into highly practical technological solutions.
In 2019, Team C3T3 from Phuoc Hiep Secondary School (Mo Cay Nam District, Ben Tre) won first prize with their project “Applying scientific knowledge and plant characteristics to create safe natural colors, flavors, and scents for beverages,” aimed at promoting food safety.
During the global COVID-19 pandemic, the team The Eco Warriors won Solve for Tomorrow2021 with the innovative idea of a “Mask recycling machine,” which transformed used face masks into plastic products. The solution addressed both urgent waste reduction needs and everyday practical uses, giving discarded masks a new “life cycle.”.
Some humanitarian projects were born from the personal concerns about the health of their loved ones, created by the ‘student scientists’ of Mindful Medical Brand, a team from Hanoi – Amsterdam High School for the Gifted.
The team’s product is a ‘Smart medical box’ applying an IoT platform and a management software system, allowing users to measure their health indicators, including skin temperature, heart rate, blood oxygen level, blood pressure, and even the ability to count drops for patients undergoing intravenous infusion. The idea behind this project is also deeply humanitarian.
To Huu Phat, the team’s design lead, shared: “A few years ago, one of my uncles unfortunately suffered a stroke. After spending several months in the hospital, he was able to return home, but still required close monitoring and special care from medical staff. The cause of this unfortunate incident was hypertension, which had not been detected and treated early.”
The team’s project was highly praised for its practicality, as it integrated multiple health-monitoring sensors into a single device, along with developing an intuitive software interface for tracking. Thanks to these strengths, the project excellently won the championship of the high school category in 2023.
The project “Application of smart technology in breeding and raising rare insects” by the Small Warriors team (Him Lam Boarding High School, Hau Giang) made a strong impression on the 2024 judging panel not only for its creativity but also for its high practical applicability and great development potential. The project researches and develops IoT, AI, and Chatbot technology solutions to simultaneously preserve water bugs and diving beetles, rare insect species that are showing signs of decline, in order to effectively exploit the economic benefits of these species while reducing biological waste.
After six months of experimentation, the project delivered very remarkable results. This product meets all three criteria of economy, society, and environment. In terms of economic benefits, the solution helps increase farming efficiency by three times, achieving a profit margin of up to 27%. The smart insect farming model of Small Warriors not only brings outstanding efficiency but also significantly reduces time and labor costs, requiring only one-third compared to traditional methods. The project also consumes less water and land resources than livestock farming, contributing to environmental protection and the realization of Vietnam’s Net Zero 2050 goal.
A creative thinking playground nurturing young technology talents
When participating in the program, the students are not only trained in core STEM knowledge but also equipped with other essential skills such as design thinking and soft skills.
With design thinking, students learn to solve problems more clearly by studying the perspectives of actual product users, real-life applications, and implementation methods to find optimal strategies and solutions for their projects. Student Le Dang Kim Ngan (Ben Tre High School) shared: “Participating in the Design Thinking course of Solve for Tomorrow has helped me a lot in studying and self-development. I have learned how to think logically, creatively, and solve problems effectively.”
Soft skills such as public speaking, teamwork, time management, and project management have greatly helped students in the process of planning, implementing, and defending their projects before the judging panel.
Even more importantly, they are also equipped with knowledge about business and entrepreneurship – knowledge that Vietnamese students are considered to still lack compared to other countries, as noted by Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh at the 6th National Startup Day for Students. Being equipped with foundational business knowledge will help their projects not only exist within the limits of this competition but also have more opportunities to “live” in the future and bring benefits to the community and society.
“The projects of C3T3, The Eco Warriors, Mindful Medical Brand, or Small Warriors are just a few examples among more than 7,400 creative ideas submitted by students to the Solve for Tomorrow contest so far. Samsung Vietnam sincerely hopes that with our small contribution, Solve for Tomorrow will be a small nursery, nurturing these creative ideas. From that nursery, the ideas will be cultivated across the S-shaped land as well as reaching out to the international stage, becoming strong trees that provide the fragrant flowers and sweet fruits of technology for life,” a Samsung representative shared.
