Tien Dung Kieu ( vi, Kiều Tiến Dũng; born 25 October 1960) is an Australian physicist and former politician. He was a Labor Party member of the

Victorian Legislative Council The Victorian Legislative Council (VLC) is the upper house of the bicameral Parliament of Victoria, Australia, the lower house being the Legislative Assembly. Both houses sit at Parliament House in Spring Street, Melbourne. The Legislative C ...

since 2018, representing

South Eastern Metropolitan Region South-Eastern Metropolitan Region is one of the eight electoral regions of Victoria, Australia, which elects five members to the Victorian Legislative Council (also referred to as the upper house) by proportional representation. The region was ...

. He was defeated at the 2022 state election. Kieu was born in

Saigon , population_density_km2 = 4,292 , population_density_metro_km2 = 697.2 , population_demonym = Saigonese , blank_name = GRP (Nominal) , blank_info = 2019 , blank1_name = – Total , blank1_ ...

Vietnam Vietnam or Viet Nam ( vi, Việt Nam, ), officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam,., group="n" is a country in Southeast Asia, at the eastern edge of mainland Southeast Asia, with an area of and population of 96 million, making it ...

in 1961. In 1979, he and his wife Liem left Vietnam as refugees on a boat to Malaysia, where they lived in a refugee camp until they were approached by Australian officials and offered passage and resettlement in Brisbane. Kieu worked as a labourer before enrolling at the

University of Queensland , mottoeng = By means of knowledge and hard work , established = , endowment = A$224.3 million , budget = A$2.1 billion , type = Public research university , chancellor = Peter Varghese , vice_chancellor = Deborah Terry , city = ...

, beginning an academic career in

econophysics Econophysics is a heterodox interdisciplinary research field, applying theories and methods originally developed by physicists in order to solve problems in economics, usually those including uncertainty or stochastic processes and nonlinear dynami ...

which took him to the

University of Edinburgh The University of Edinburgh ( sco, University o Edinburgh, gd, Oilthigh Dhùn Èideann; abbreviated as ''Edin.'' in post-nominals) is a public research university based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Granted a royal charter by King James VI in 15 ...

and

Oxford University Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...

, and then to the United States as a

Fulbright scholar The Fulbright Program, including the Fulbright–Hays Program, is one of several United States Cultural Exchange Programs with the goal of improving intercultural relations, cultural diplomacy, and intercultural competence between the people o ...

Columbia Columbia may refer to: * Columbia (personification), the historical female national personification of the United States, and a poetic name for America Places North America Natural features * Columbia Plateau, a geologic and geographic region in ...

Princeton Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ni ...

and MIT, before returning to Australia to work at Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne.

References

1960 births Living people Australian Labor Party members of the Parliament of Victoria Members of the Victorian Legislative Council Australian physicists University of Queensland alumni Alumni of the University of Edinburgh Academic staff of Swinburne University of Technology Vietnamese refugees Vietnamese emigrants to Australia 21st-century Australian politicians {{Australia-Labor-Victoria-MP-stub