The annual list of highly cited researchers compiled by Web of Science, a reputed publisher-independent global citation database, was released earlier this week.

It identifies scientists and social scientists who've produced many papers ranked in the top 1 percent for citations in their field and year of publication, demonstrating significant research influence among their peers.

Dieu, who worked at the Norway South-Eastern University, heads a research group at the Ton Duc Thang University.

He does research in the field of geo-informatics and has to his credit 171 published international scientific papers and over 3,800 citations, according to Web of Science.

Hung, a computer science researcher now working at the China Medicine University in Taiwan and Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology (Hutech), focuses on advanced trends of robust computational methods, and computer-based simulation technology in engineering applications.

He has published more than 136 scientific papers with over, 7,600 citations.

Hung was also named in the list of authors of most-cited research papers by multimedia and information firm Thomson Reuters list in 2014 and 2015.

This year, the U.S. is home to the highest number of highly cited researchers, with 2,737 authors, representing 44 percent of the total, followed by China, the U.K., Germany and Australia.

Last September, three professors from Vietnamese universities were in the list of 100,000 most-cited researchers in the world, according to a study by PLOS Biology, a U.S. based peer-reviewed scientific journal covering all aspects of biology.