Inventing for a cause

Seven years ago when scientists reported cell phone waves might harm the human brain, Tran Van Tin invented a glass fiber device to protect the brain and sold it to a Malaysian company for US$20,000.

“I needed the money to pay for my mother’s medical treatment,” Tin said, referring to his mom’s hospitalization due to a brain disease at the time.

But since then, the man hailed as the “king of inventions” by the Ho Chi Minh Communist Youth Union has only given his ideas away to the Vietnam Association for the Disabled.

Tin, now 43, founder and president of HCMC-based IC Electronics Vietnam (ICEVN), was the first person in the country to open a school that teaches and provides high tech jobs to the disabled.

“All my life, many people have helped me out and I didn’t have a chance to thank many of them,” he said.

“Helping disabled people become more confident in life is my way of saying thanks.”

Boy genius

Tin had been passionate about physics as early as primary school.

After learning a new law or formula in class, the boy would go about testing them out at home.

“We called him crazy because he opened up television sets and cassette players to learn about their electronic structures and broke them,” said Tin’s long-time friend, Tran Xuan Tin, a department director at C Hospital in central Da Nang City.

In the 1980s, schools in Tin’s home village in the central province of Quang Nam lacked physics labs so he instead collected discarded wires and bottles to carry out his experiments.

Realizing his son’s passion, his father turned part of the family’s storehouse into a lab.

The two-square-meter room was a meager workshop space, but served as a wonderful hideaway for Tin to conduct his tests.

It was in this lab that he ventured from verifying basic physic laws into the realm of electronics.

He dissected every electronic object he found in his house, until he impressed everyone by opening an electronic repair shop with a friend in 1983 when he was still in high school.

Youth wanderlust

After finishing high school in 1986, like most of his friends, Tin left home to apply for college in HCMC.

“During the entrance exams, I forgot the date of the physics test and missed it,” he recalled.

“When I returned home, I didn’t dare say I missed the test but lied and said I had failed the exam.”

But his mother’s disappointment gnawed at him and Tin made up his mind to get accepted to college the next time around.

He did get into the HCMC University of Polytechnics the following year with the highest score in the math, physics and chemistry category of that year’s entrance exam.

With this impressive achievement, he was granted a full scholarship by the university to study computer science at Kiev Polytechnics University in the former Soviet Union.

When he lived abroad, Tin often visited flea markets that sold electronic items and cars.

His interest in these markets led him to travel to over 14 countries in Europe during his eight years of college and postgraduate studies.

Burning the midnight oil

In the 1990s in Vietnam, jobs were hard to find even for a college graduate with a masters degree from the USSR like Tin.

After several years of unemployment, followed by spots of teaching and repairing cell phones, Tin’s career started to brighten when he invented his brain protection device and later a mobile battery charger for motorbikes.

He tried to sell the charger but the all companies he approached turned down the idea.

“They thought I was mad. Perhaps I was.

At that time, few Vietnamese used mobile phones,” Tin said.

So he went about establishing his own company ICEVN in 2004.

Thus far, ICEVN has produced more than 10 household electronic products including mobile phone chargers, MP3 music players and counterfeit money scanners.

Now widely known in HCMC as an outstanding entrepreneur, Tin doesn’t just want to rest on his laurels.

Hoang The Dam, a delivery man for ICEVN, says he sees Tin laboring in the lab from 11 p.m. to 3 a.m. daily.

Nurturing dreams

One year after ICEVN was founded, Tin opened the ICEVN Support Center for Disabled People and the ICEVN Telecommunication Electronics Vocational School in HCMC.

The school now has 200 students, over half of whom are disabled.

“I dream about opening a vocational school for disabled children nationwide,” said Tin.

At ICEVN vocational school, disabled students are provided free tuition, room and board as well a part time job.

After a six-month training course, they can work for the company and become an instructor at the school.

At the company, disabled workers are also offered free accommodation.

“Uncle Tin often encourages us to study hard to have a good job,” said Huynh Truc Lam, a young disabled employee at ICEVN.

For Tin who grew up in a poor village, education is the key to success in life.

“My hometown has only sand, sunshine and wind,” he said.

“The barren nature immerses natives in poverty. So we had only one way to escape poverty – to study hard and do well.”

ICEVB’s school has opened up three other branches in southern Kien Giang Province, the central town of Hue and Hanoi.

Tin plans to start another branch in his hometown of Quang Nam Province as soon as prices ease up in the current financial climate.

“I hope more and more people will buy our products and invest in our company so that we can expand production and earn more money to improve the life of the disabled,” he said.

Reported by Van Khoa