Foundational AI Research
We study the mechanisms inside AI models and methods for behavioral steering, expanding the scientific foundations of next-generation AI systems. A notable example is Angular Steering, a NeurIPS 2025 Spotlight paper.
Company
Built on Research. Driven by Real Impact.
Discover Torilab—our mission, team, journey, key milestones, and opportunities to collaborate with us.
About TorilabWhere Research
Where Research
Meets the Power
to Build
As the research and technology development unit of NEKSAI Group, Torilab connects foundational AI research with product engineering, putting scientific advances to work in fields ranging from healthcare and education to content creation, entertainment, and sports.
Technology Development Within the NEKSAI Ecosystem
We bring research into the development, deployment, and continuous improvement of AI products across NEKSAI Group, addressing real-world needs.
Co-Development With Partners
We contribute core technological capabilities to co-create practical AI products and services with business partners under a revenue-sharing model.
Process
- 01Research
- 02Engineering
- 03Application
- 04Refinement
Milestones & Traction
Achievements & Growth Journey
Spotlight · Top ~3%NeurIPS 2025
04Countries and markets where our products are in operation
Full-cycle R&DEnd-to-end ownership, from algorithm research to product deployment
- Corporate
Torilab Company Limited established in Hanoi, Vietnam
- Research
Paper published: “Angular Steering: Behavior Control via Rotation in Activation Space” (arXiv:2510.26243)
- Research
Angular Steering receives Spotlight recognition at NeurIPS 2025
- Product
Twomi platform launched; Dr. Avatar launched with a partner
- Product
Kiketsuta launched on iOS and Android
Leadership & Team
The People Leading Torilab
Huong Thu (Sophia) Pham
Chief Executive Officer
Leads Torilab’s operations and strategic direction, aligning organizational goals with research priorities, technology development, and product applications.
Huong Thu (Sophia) Pham
Chief Executive Officer
Huong Thu (Sophia) Pham is a technology executive with over 20 years of experience spanning software research and development, fintech, and AI platforms. At Torilab, she serves as Chief Executive Officer, Chief Development Officer, and Chief Product Officer, overseeing strategic planning, overall operations, and product development.
Before joining Torilab, Sophia served as Lead IT Project Manager at PhillipCapital, managing a development team in Vietnam and collaborating with teams in Singapore, Malaysia, and India to build financial trading applications. She also spent nearly a decade as Head of Business Analysis at Japan-based NEXTOP alongside hands-on experience at Viettel Software, part of Viettel Group, and the Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology.
Her achievements include building an in-house platform that replaced an outsourced system and reduced associated costs by 50%, as well as leading the turnaround of a super-app through structured development, quality management, and maintenance practices. She also partnered with marketing teams to develop sales performance dashboards that supported commercial decision-making during a period when monthly revenue grew from US$1 million to US$3 million within a few months. Her leadership emphasizes developing capable teams, strengthening accountability, and establishing reliable delivery processes.
A former researcher in mathematics and informatics, Sophia combines an analytical foundation with knowledge of machine learning and artificial intelligence to guide technology and product decisions. A two-time third-prize winner in Vietnam’s national mathematics competitions, she holds a bachelor’s degree in Applied Mathematics and Informatics and a master’s degree in Mathematics from Vietnam National University, Hanoi. She also holds a bachelor’s degree in International Economics.
Her professional credentials include PMP and PMI-ACP from the Project Management Institute and CBAP from the International Institute of Business Analysis. These are complemented by certifications in product management from IBM, digital transformation from the University of Virginia, and prompt engineering from Vanderbilt University.
Dai Van Nguyen
Chief Technology Officer
Leads technology and engineering direction, driving the translation of AI research methods into technological capabilities that support product development and deployment.
Dai Van Nguyen
Chief Technology Officer
Dai Van Nguyen is a technology leader with nearly 20 years of experience in developing financial trading systems, blockchain platforms, digital healthcare solutions, AI-powered learning platforms, and next-generation interactive AI systems. As Chief Technology Officer at Torilab, he leads the company’s technology vision and strategy, shaping the architecture of multimodal AI agent systems capable of processing text and speech and recognizing emotions. He also drives the integration of large language models (LLMs), fine-tuning workflows, and scalable AI infrastructure.
Before joining Torilab, Dai served as Chief Technology Officer at GOGA Tech and X3English, leading technology strategy for English-learning platforms deployed across six markets: Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, Brazil, Japan, and China. He championed the integration of speech recognition, AI-powered pronunciation assessment, and gamification to enhance the learning experience. These platforms grew from hundreds of thousands to millions of learners, with their automatic speech recognition (ASR) engine achieving approximately 97% accuracy.
He also served as Chief Technology Officer at Bluebelt Group in Tokyo, overseeing the architecture and implementation of blockchain-based financial trading systems and digital asset exchanges. At Japan-based NEXTOP, he held the roles of Head of R&D and Head of MedTech, developing multi-tier trading systems for foreign exchange brokerage firms such as DMM Australia, CAFX (CyberAgent), and Traders Securities, serving clients in Japan, Australia, and the United Kingdom. His work also included the cloud-based healthcare platform KARTE.CLINIC. He began his career as a Project Technical Leader at Orenj Technology in Melbourne, Australia.
Dai holds a degree in Information Technology from the Posts and Telecommunications Institute of Technology in Vietnam. His expertise spans system and solution architecture, cloud computing, high-availability systems, and full-stack development. Combining strong engineering foundations with strategic thinking and team leadership experience, he focuses on building robust, scalable technology platforms that connect engineering innovation with product development and business needs.
Phuong (Fenix) Do
Head of AI Research & Data Intelligence
Phuong (Fenix) Do
Head of AI Research & Data Intelligence
Phuong (Fenix) Do is an AI and data science leader with more than 15 years of experience spanning advertising technology, recommendation systems, natural language processing, and generative AI. At Torilab, he leads AI research and data intelligence, designing and managing AI agent ecosystems across business functions. His work covers orchestrating agent workflows, governance, and performance, measuring automation ROI, and integrating AI agents into business operations to enable scalable human–AI collaboration. He previously led Torilab’s Business Intelligence and Data Product teams, building BI systems with generative workflows and recommendation engines.
Before joining Torilab, Phuong worked as an AI Researcher at Blue Belt Technology, where he developed conversational AI experiences for Suzuverse and Castalk. He built ChatFlow platforms using large language models (LLMs), NLP, and fine-tuning, and published the Castalk-v1.0 and Castalk-VLM models on Hugging Face.
At Cốc Cốc, he spent nearly five years as AdTargeting Team Lead and later Data Scientist Team Lead. He led the company’s machine learning pipeline, moderation and anomaly detection, and the 2021 News Feed recommendation engine. He also developed large-scale models for the ad engine, including CTR prediction, quality scoring, bid simulation, and bid pacing, as well as core NLP technologies and user segmentation models. Earlier, as a Senior Researcher and Ad Network Team Lead at VCCorp, he worked on CTR prediction, news ranking, image recognition for brand safety, and topic modeling. He began his career as a Software Engineer at Orenj Technology.
Phuong holds a Ph.D. in Biomathematics, Bioinformatics, and Computational Biology from the University of Montpellier, France, where he developed bioinformatics tools to identify tandem repeats in protein structures. He also holds a Master’s degree in Computer Science and a Bachelor’s degree in Software Engineering from the Posts and Telecommunications Institute of Technology in Vietnam.
Trung (Charlie) Le
LLM Engineering Manager
Trung (Charlie) Le
LLM Engineering Manager
Trung (Charlie) Le is an AI engineer who has worked in speech and language AI since 2017. As LLM Engineering Manager at Torilab, he leads large language model (LLM) engineering for the company’s applications.
Before joining Torilab, he spent five years at the Viettel AI and Data Services Center, part of the Viettel Group (Military Industry and Telecoms Group). There, he single-handedly developed the streaming speech recognition backend for Viettel Cyberbot, capable of processing five concurrent speech streams on a single CPU core. He optimized Kaldi so the system could sustain many hours of continuous streaming recognition, and developed a large-scale speech recognition system for a telecom company’s voicemail platform.
From 2022 to 2024, he worked at GOGA Technology Joint Stock Company. He developed an English pronunciation grading system that can process 80 seconds of audio on a single Intel Core i5-11400 processor, and developed and deployed AI services for the company’s AI tutor, including speech recognition, speech synthesis, and scoring.
He graduated from Hanoi University of Science and Technology.
Kien (Kaki) Tran
AI Backend Engineering Manager
Kien (Kaki) Tran
AI Backend Engineering Manager
Kien (Kaki) Tran is a software engineer with more than 15 years of experience, currently focused on real-time AI systems, scalable microservices, and event-driven architecture. As AI Backend Engineering Manager at Torilab, he manages the AI backend team while also building and maintaining the core API gateway (HTTP and WebSocket) for the company’s AI avatar platform, which lets users create characters from images, text descriptions, or attributes, give them a custom voice, and hold real-time video conversations with them. The gateway handles authentication, rate limiting, and request orchestration across downstream services such as the LLM Agent, TTS Agent, and Video Agent.
He implemented event-driven communication between the platform’s microservices via RabbitMQ, allowing each agent to operate and scale independently and removing tight synchronous dependencies. He also integrated Gemini Live native audio into the platform, replacing the speech-to-text (STT) pipeline to improve throughput and avoid transcription errors. In addition, he built AI-assisted engineering workflows covering bug investigation, feature implementation, deployment gating, and regular reflection. In these workflows, AI handles execution, while review and approval remain with people.
Before joining Torilab, Kien spent more than 11 years at Got It. He started as a Software Engineer developing backend services for Photo Study and Excelchat, then became a Senior Software Engineer at Got It AI, developing backend services for AI chatbot and conversational AI products and leading teams of 2 to 20 engineers on a RAG/LLM chatbot platform. He began his career as a Web Developer at Tamtay JSC.
Kien holds an Engineer’s degree in Information Technology from Hanoi University of Science and Technology.
Ly (Mona) Nguyen
AI Business Analyst Manager
Ly (Mona) Nguyen
AI Business Analyst Manager
Ly (Mona) Nguyen is a software quality assurance and business analysis professional with about 15 years of experience, spanning software development, manual and automated testing, and quality evaluation of AI systems. At Torilab, she now serves as AI Business Analyst Manager, managing business analysis for the company’s AI products. She previously led full-stack quality control of Torilab’s AI products (Full-stack AI QC), including the evaluation of large language model (LLM) outputs. Her background in testing and quality evaluation gives her a deep understanding of how products behave, which she brings to requirements analysis and specification.
She has led test automation as QA Automation Lead at NTT DATA, working with Gherkin, WebDriver, Playwright, and TypeScript. Earlier, she was a QA Engineer at EMOTIV, carrying out manual and automated testing for mobile, desktop, and web applications, and a Test Lead at VKX, responsible for test design and test case development. She began her career as a Java Software Developer at DZS, building full-stack web applications in Java and administering Jira to help the team establish effective workflows.
Ly holds a Bachelor’s degree in Information Technology from Hanoi University of Science and Technology.
Giap (Gabi) Dang
Project Manager
Giap (Gabi) Dang
Project Manager
Giap (Gabi) Dang is a project manager with about 11 years of experience in information technology, including about six years in project management. He is a certified Project Management Professional (PMP), works in Japanese (JLPT N2) and English, and has more than six years of experience developing embedded systems and automotive software. At Torilab, he serves as Project Manager.
Before joining Torilab, he was a Project Manager at VMO Holdings, responsible for activity and resource planning, task assignment, progress tracking, and risk and issue management, often running several projects at once. As PM leader of a business unit, he also supported other project managers on schedule, budget, quality, risks and change requests. At VMO, he was named Excellent Employee in 2022 and 2024, received the Project of the Year award in 2022, and won The Customer Choice award in 2022 for the project with the highest customer satisfaction score.
Before that, he spent many years at FPT Software. As Project Manager, he ran a project to build a vehicle control center for a factory and grew the project team from 5 to 15 members. He also worked in Japan, first as Sub Leader on a Nissan project, conducting hazard analysis to define requirements for the safety functions of self-driving cars, and then as Team Lead on a Sony project, developing APIs for camera software and serving as a Bridge SE with the client. He began his career as a developer at FPT Software, building digital car dashboards and an Apple Watch app that controls the car via iPhone, before leading a 20-person team developing a digital dashboard.
He studied at the Center for Training Excellent Students of Hanoi University of Science and Technology. His graduation project, the design and construction of an omni-directional robot, was presented at the Vietnam Conference and Exhibition on Control and Automation (VCCA) 2015.
Tung (Liam) Lam
Business Analyst Manager
Tung (Liam) Lam
Business Analyst Manager
Tung (Liam) Lam is a business analyst with more than 10 years of experience in the IT industry. He focuses on understanding business needs and translating them into technology solutions, ensuring smooth project execution through effective communication and collaboration. As Business Analyst Manager at Torilab, he manages the business analysis team, connects business needs with the engineering team, and guides how requirements are analyzed and specified for the company’s products.
Before joining Torilab, he was a Lead Business Analyst at Binh Anh Electronic Technology Development Co., Ltd. Earlier, he worked at ITT Solution, starting as a Software Developer before moving into business analysis. His programming background helps him work closely with engineering teams. His expertise covers requirements analysis and management, requirement specifications, user experience and user interface (UX/UI) design in Figma, and database design, along with experience in team leadership and mentoring.
He studied Computer Software Technology at Hanoi University of Science and Technology.
Tuan (Thomas) Nguyen Anh
Backend Engineering Manager
Tuan (Thomas) Nguyen Anh
Backend Engineering Manager
Tuan (Thomas) Nguyen Anh is a software engineer with more than 10 years of experience, much of it working with Japanese clients. He communicates directly with clients in Japanese and is proficient in Python, JavaScript, PHP, and Java. As Backend Engineering Manager at Torilab, he manages a backend team of 10 engineers developing backend services in parallel for five AI applications, including R10 Ronaldinho Playground, Twomi, and AI AVATAR. His team builds and maintains services that connect with the APIs and libraries developed by the AI team, using Python (Django, Celery), PostgreSQL, Redis, and AWS.
Before joining Torilab, he was a Team Leader at Geniee International Group, working on a sales force automation (SFA) tool used by more than 6,000 organizations in Japan. At VinBigData, as a Senior Software Engineer, he worked on a conversational AI platform: building features for Bot Builder, a no-code module that lets users design chatbot conversation scenarios; contributing to training pipelines and a serving system for user-created chatbots in a B2B2C model; and training new team members. He also served as a Senior Software Engineer at Dr.JOY Vietnam, a communication platform for the medical field, and as a Team Leader managing a team of eight at RELIPA Software.
He also worked in Tokyo for Goalist on a large ERM project alongside Japanese engineers and a team of about 20 engineers in China. Earlier, he was a full-stack engineer at GMO Vietnam Lab, developing e-commerce projects for the Japanese market and leading a team of three. He began his career as a programmer at VIPS.
Tuan holds a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from Hanoi University of Science and Technology.
Trang (Kacey) Bui
Product Manager
Trang (Kacey) Bui
Product Manager
Trang (Kacey) Bui is a product management professional with about six years of experience, spanning e-wallets to AI-powered products. At Torilab, she serves as Product Manager.
Before joining Torilab, she was a Product Manager at eUp and an AI Product Manager at TECHVIFY. Earlier, she spent more than two years at GOGA as Senior Product Owner, working on products built on large language models (LLMs) and text-to-speech technology. She began her career as a Product Owner at the MoMo e-wallet (M_Service), applying Scrum to product management, while also working as a freelance Product Owner for GenifyAI.
She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Tourism and Travel Services Management from Hanoi University and also studied at CATS Academy Boston in the United States.
Ngoc (Louis) Dao
Mobile Manager
Ngoc (Louis) Dao
Mobile Manager
Ngoc (Louis) Dao is a software engineer and technical manager with more than 15 years of experience, specializing in mobile app development for both iOS and Android, from native Android (Kotlin, Java) to cross-platform frameworks such as React Native and Flutter. As Mobile Manager at Torilab, he leads the company’s mobile app development, managing the mobile team and setting the technical direction for its iOS and Android apps.
Before joining Torilab, he spent many years at SmartOSC. As Line Manager, he built the mobile team from scratch and grew it to 14 members. He recruited and trained new engineers for the Mobile, Magento, Front-end and QA teams, and led TH Group’s retail project, integrating it with SAP and payment gateways. On the Transmart project, he led the mobile and API teams in building apps for both iOS and Android. Later, as Technical Manager, he managed a mobile team working directly with clients and supported pre-sales activities. He also contributed to projects for Central Group, True Digital, Purple Ventures (the Robinhood super app) and China Bank’s retail banking app in the Philippines, and ran training courses on Magento, Android, React and React Native. Between these two periods, he worked as a Software Engineer at Insight Data Science, where he managed an outsourced team and brought the Messaging project in-house.
Before SmartOSC, he was a Technical Leader at JMango360, leading the Android and Prestashop teams. There he built an m-commerce app platform that serves multiple clients on Magento, Shopify and BigCommerce from a single code base, applying Clean Architecture and Reactive Programming. At Cinnamon Lab, he developed Android apps for photo-sharing products such as Seconds and PicChat, including camera effects built with OpenGL. He began his career teaching web programming classes at Bach Khoa Software Central, then developed taxi booking apps for the Australian market at JMango.
Ngoc holds a Bachelor’s degree in Software Engineering from the University of Greenwich (Vietnam) and a Higher Diploma in Software Engineering from Bach Khoa Aptech. He also studied at Hanoi University of Science and Technology.
Hoa (Harmony) Do
Quality Control Manager
Hoa (Harmony) Do
Quality Control Manager
Hoa (Harmony) Do is a software testing and quality assurance professional with more than 15 years of experience in information technology, including about 10 years in front-end development and more than seven years in testing. Her front-end background and solid understanding of UI/UX allow her to evaluate products from both a technical and a user-experience perspective. At Torilab, she serves as Quality Control Manager.
Before joining Torilab, she was a Test Leader at TDT Asia, a company developing financial information systems and software for the Asian market. There she worked with project leaders and managers to build the QA team and testing process, trained new members, assigned tasks, analyzed requirements and wrote software requirements specifications (SRS). She also used test results to assess test coverage and release readiness for features of the company’s iOS and Android apps. Earlier, she worked as a Tester at Offspring Digital and Wize Solutions, testing websites, apps and HR management software, working with project managers on test plans, and conducting post-release testing.
She spent more than 10 years in front-end development. At eXo Platform, an open-source collaboration platform for enterprises, she worked as a Front-end Developer and later as Team Leader, managing a UI team of up to six people and running sprint planning, sprint reviews and daily stand-ups. At SmartOSC, she turned designs into websites, helped developers integrate front-end and back-end code, and recommended design improvements.
She graduated in Information Technology from the Posts and Telecommunications Institute of Technology.
Phong (Peter) Nguyen
BO Manager
Phong (Peter) Nguyen
BO Manager
Phong (Peter) Nguyen is a senior operations and back-office executive with experience in project management and corporate operations in Japanese business environments. At Torilab, as BO Manager, he has built and developed the company’s operational and human resources foundations from its early days. He coordinates across Human Resources, Legal, Accounting, and Finance, while fostering a disciplined, high-performance workplace that supports the company’s strategic business objectives.
Before joining Torilab, he worked as a Project Assistant at Obayashi Vietnam Corporation, supporting the project management office for the development of AEON MALL Hue. He ensured smooth coordination, multilingual communication, and administrative operations throughout the various stages of the project. Prior to that, he served as General Director of Japan Premium Home JSC., a Japanese-invested FDI company in real estate development and construction, for more than four years. In this role, he oversaw overall project operations and led cross-functional teams across legal, design, construction, finance, and sales to deliver projects on schedule and within budget.
Peter holds a Master of Business Administration (MBA) from Tohoku University, Japan, where he also served as a teaching assistant, and a Bachelor of Business Administration in International Business from Foreign Trade University. He is currently pursuing a Bachelor of Laws at Hanoi Law University.
Cong (Rio) Hoang
Project Manager
Cong (Rio) Hoang
Project Manager
Cong (Rio) Hoang is a technology project and product manager with experience spanning mobile application development and AI product management. At Torilab, he serves as Project Manager.
Before joining Torilab, he spent more than nine years as a Manager at Blue Belt Technology Co., Ltd. During this time, he built and managed high-performance engineering teams from the ground up, led the development of affiliate platforms and e-commerce systems, designed and implemented centralized and decentralized e-wallet solutions, and developed AI products leveraging computer vision and generative AI platforms. He managed the entire product lifecycle, from ideation through deployment and operations, while coordinating cross-functional teams to ensure delivery on schedule and within scope.
Previously, he worked as Project Lead at Sofiamedix Software Co., Ltd., overseeing projects across various sectors, including healthcare and fashion. He began his career at NEXTOP Co., Ltd. as a Mobile Developer before progressing to Mobile Team Leader, where he led a team of eight engineers in developing mobile applications for the fintech sector.
Rio holds a Bachelor’s degree in Information Technology from the Posts and Telecommunications Institute of Technology (PTIT).
Long (Chris) Mai
Project Manager
Long (Chris) Mai
Project Manager
Long (Chris) Mai is a Project Manager at Torilab with over 10 years of experience in technology project and program management, primarily in the banking, finance, and insurance sectors.
Before joining Torilab, he served as a Program Manager at FPT Software, leading banking digital transformation programs for domestic and international clients through both offshore and onsite delivery models. During this time, the number of projects under his responsibility doubled, while the team size grew approximately 11-fold. Previously, he worked as a Senior Project Manager and Scrum Master at FPT Software, as well as a Project Manager and Backend Developer at MCB. He was also awarded the title of Excellent PM by FPT.
Chris holds a Bachelor’s degree in Information Technology Engineering from Hanoi University of Science and Technology (AUF Advanced Program), a Master’s degree in Applied Mathematics, and certifications including Professional Scrum Master, Professional Product Owner, and PMI-ACP.
Company Information
Company Information
Official corporate and contact information for Torilab, intended for partners, researchers, and organizations interested in our work.
- Legal Entity Name
- Torilab Company Limited (Công ty TNHH Torilab)
- Business Registration Number
- 0110863425
- Date of Establishment
- October 15, 2024
- Legal Representative
- Ms. Huong Thu (Sophia) Pham
- Registered Office Address
- 20F Lancaster Luminaire, 1152 Lang Street, Lang Ward, Hanoi, Vietnam
- Parent Organization
- NEKSAI Group
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Torilab welcomes opportunities to collaborate on research, technology development, and the creation of AI applications with real-world value. We also welcome people who share our passion for research and technological innovation.