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PHI TRAN WINS FIRST BELGIAN WOMENPRENEUR & VINCI ENERGIES AWARD
STUDENT IN FOCUS
To attract more female talent to technical professions, international organisation Womenpreneur Initiative and technology company VINCI Energies Belgium awarded the best master’s thesis realised by a female engineering student in Belgium on 9 June 2023. Phi Tran, Group T Campus master student Chemical Engineering Technology, was selected the first winner. A portrait of a role model for current and future engineers.
I enjoy learning experiences which are both difficult and enriching, helping me to develop my communication, strategic thinking and problem-solving skills and elevate them to a higher level.” This statement typifies Phi to the full and runs like a thread through her academic career and personal life. Repeatedly, she characterizes as a go-getter who does not shy away from obstacles to achieve her goal.
Becoming an engineer has been Phi’s dream since childhood. Not only does she find science and technology interesting, but she is convinced they are tools that allow you to be useful in society. And that is what Phi is mostly all about. As the daughter of Vietnamese immigrants, she knows how difficult it is to find your way in a new culture and environment.
Own business
To support herself, Phi opens the first Vietnamese snack bar in Leuven as a first-year student at Campus Group T. Students looking for a quick, cheap, and tasty bite soon find their way to Phi’s restaurant. As the number of customers increases, the time she can devote to her studies diminishes. Before long, she faces a choice: her business or her studies. Mindful of her childhood dream, she opts for the studies. She looks for an operator for the restaurant and manages to enrol for the Master of Chemical Engineering Technology, through a professional bachelor’s programme and a preparatory programme.
Phi’s master’s thesis, not coincidentally, deals with a topic that includes not only technological but also economic and ecological aspects. Under the guidance of Professor Giuseppe Granata of the ChEMaRTS (Chemistry for Energy & Materials Recovery in waste Treatment Systems) research group, she made a techno-economic design of a hydrometallurgical process for recovery of antimony from ashes of incinerated plastic waste derived from electronic and electrical appliances. “Antimony is a silver-grey metalloid used in the semiconductor industry, more specifically in the production of integrated circuits or chips,” explains Phi. “As this raw material is not found in Europe, the EU is dependent on imports from China, among others, which makes it vulnerable to price fluctuations or geopolitical tensions. The recovery of antimony from plastic waste therefore has significant advantages, not only ecological but also economic and strategic.”
Multiple winner
On 4 May 2023, a theme evening ‘Women Entrepreneurs in Tech: Inspiring Role Models’ took place at Group T Campus. There, Womenpreneur Initiative and VINCI Energies Belgium presented their new award for an engineering student who could submit the best master’s thesis in the field of environmental protection, resource optimisation and addressing ecological and economic challenges in general. Phi did not let this opportunity pass her by and submitted her master’s thesis. A masterstroke, as it turned out, because out of twenty submissions -particularly from Frenchspeaking universities- her work scored as the winner. Barely a month later, she received the award in the prestigious setting of The Merode in Brussels in the presence of top politicians and entrepreneurs.
With this award Phi was not on her trial run. In spring, she and three fellow students already won the Best Pitch Award at the Belgian final of the Clean Tech Challenge. “There too, the challenge was to find a sustainable solution for a better future and to pitch it in front of a jury,” says Phi. “We managed to develop an out-of-the-box solution that should not only solve real-life problems but also had a profitable business model.”
Resilience
In her scarce spare time, Phi practices a little-known hobby: kickboxing, a martial art that combines the punches of boxing with the kicks from sports such as karate and taekwondo. “For me, it’s not so much about the fighting, but rather the physical training,” Phi clarifies. “Kickboxing is a full-body workout that also boosts your mental strength and resilience, because you are repeatedly provoked. And in the end, your career and professional life is also one big challenge.”
After her graduation, Phi could immediately start working at VINCI Energies Belgium. There, for a year, she will follow a special path during which she can become acquainted with each of the four areas in which the company operates: Construction, Infrastructure, Engineering, and ICT. After this exploration, it will be determined where and how Phi’s versatile talent can develop to its full potential.
Yves Persoons
