Dear VEFFA’s members,

It has been one month since the days we met at Shreveport, Louisiana. I write this letter to you to summarize activities we have done in January and our plan for February. This letter is the first one of the monthly letters we are going to send to you at the first Saturday of each month.

A) January 2012 activities

1. We have a new Board of Advisors and new Executive Team.

• Board of Advisors includes: Do Trung Thong (alumnus, cohort 2004), Nguyen Minh Anh (UIUC, cohort 2007), Hong Trung Dung (Purdue, cohort 2008)
• Executive Team includes: Ngo Thanh Hoan – Executive director (Duke, cohort 2011), Nguyen Viet Hung – IT & Laws coordinator (Iowa State, cohort 2009), Tran Ngoc Mai – External Relations coordinator (Upenn, cohort 2010), Duong Thi Thu – Internal Relations coordinator (Upenn, cohort 2011), Bui Thanh Duyen – Finance coordinator (Cornell, cohort 2010)

Introduction about Board of Advisors’ and Executive Team’s members is now available on VEFFA website

http://www.veffa.org/main/about-us/board-of-advisors/current-team/

http://www.veffa.org/main/about-us/executive-team/current-ext/

2. A survey on the 9^th VEF annual conference was sent out. Nearly fifty responses have been received. The survey will be closed on 00:00 Feb 13rd 2012.
3. An announcement about 2012 VEFFA Photo Contest was sent out. Eighteen photos and five video clips have been received. We are going to stop receiving photos and clips on Feb 19^th 2012.
4. VEFFA mailing lists have been reconstructing to include new members and the members who have not been on the mailing list before. Mailing list announce@veffa.org has been fully updated. Mailing list fellows@veffa.org would be updated soon.
5. VEFFA Internal Wiki & Guideline has been set up. All documents supporting Board of Advisors, Executive Team, and committees for doing their jobs would be uploaded to that Internal Wiki & Guideline. This internal website is not visible to all VEFFA members.

B) February 2012 Plan

1. Invite two external members for Board of Advisors
2. Wrap up the survey and photo contest
3. Update fellows@veffa.org mailing list
4. Send out to all VEFFA members financial report of the last year 2011 and collect membership fee through Paypal from members who have not paid the fee
5. Review the status of VEFFA projects
6. Set up the 2012 action plan

The goal of the monthly letters is to keep you informed of VEFFA’s activities during the former month and of our plan for the  existing month. In addition, I would like to list VEFFA members’ achievements and news so that we can share and support each other. Please contact us via email at executives@veffa.org if you have anything which you want to share with VEFFA community and don’t want to post by yourself. For example, you have just received the degree, published an article, got a new job, or won an award, etc…Your information would be helpful for other members who can learn from your experiences or set up a collaboration.

If you have any ideas to enrich VEFFA activities, feel free to contact us at executives@veffa.org

Thank you very much and have a nice weekend.

Hoàn

——————————————————————–
Hoan Thanh Ngo, VEFFA Executive Director

PhD Student in Biomedical Engineering,

Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, USA
Email: ngothanhhoan@veffa.org
HP: 001-919-638-4988