Dr. Hien Nguyen was born in Hanoi, Vietnam. After finishing her Bachelor of Science in Informatics and Applied Mathematics at Hanoi University of Technology, she worked for 3C Inc. as an Application Developer and then joined United Nations Development Programme (Hanoi's office) as a local area network manager. She went to the United States in 1996 to start her quest for finding the intersection of what she enjoys doing and Computer Science. She received her Master degree in Computer Science at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM) in 1999. She lived in Milwaukee for three years before joining UCONN and fell in love with Midwest ever since.

Hien defended her Ph.D dissertation in Computer Science in May of 2005 at the University of Connecticut (UCONN). Just in case you are not familiar with college sport, UCONN is well-known by two strong men and women basketball programs. She decided to join the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater as a tenure track assistant professor starting Fall 2005. She continues to pursue her dream of making the computers help the users find the right information at the right time using the right tools, and follows footsteps with many great professors (who she has privilleges to work with) to care and help her students to success.

In her leisure time, Hien loves watching movies. Especially, she implemented a movie recommender system called DIVA for her Master thesis. She became a big fan of college women basketball ever since joining UCONN. She used to speak French fluently. Unfortunately, she has not got many chances to practice it. Additionally, she loves traveling. Thailand, India, the Neitherlands, Scotland, and Australia are some places that she has visited.

She is married to a professional web developer - David Hoang who helps her tremendously in creating this web site and she is a proud mother of three lovely kids: seven years old daughter Emily, five years old son Benjamin, and one year old Steve.