31 AUGUST 2018 – The second batch of Young Innovators Program (YIP) awardees officially sealed their partnership with the Department of Science and Technology’s Philippine Council for Industry, Energy, and Emerging Technology Research and Development (DOST-PCIEERD) through the signing of a memorandum of agreement (MOA) held at the Heritage Hotel Manila.

Launched in 2017, YIP recognizes promising researchers under the age of 30 to further encourage them to delve into scientific research through provision of financial assistance. This year’s YIP awardees, who were announced last July 18 during the National Science and Technology Week (NSTW), consists of six (6) aspiring young innovators out of 55 who submitted their research proposals. The six (6) YIP awardees, the academic institutions they represent, the title of their research projects, and the names of the members and mentors, are as follows

1. Gerardo Martin D. Quindoza III

Mentor: Mr. John Kenneth A. Cruz

Department of Mining, Metallurgical, and Materials Engineering – University of the Philippines Diliman

Project: Synthesis of Nanocellulose reinforced Chitosan Hydrogel as bioink for 3D printing of artificial articular cartilage

2. Jeremy C. De Leon

Mentor: Engr. Febus Reidj G. Cruz

Mapua University

Project BAGWIS: A low-cost micro wind turbine system for lighting, charging, and electrifies floodwater detection

3. Janina M. Guarte

Mentor: Dr. Joyce A Ibana

Institute of Biology – University of the Philippines Diliman

Project: Capitalizing on microbial interactions for improving shelf life and gut-health benefits of Carabao’s milk product (NICE4GUT)

4. Neil David C. Cayanan, Shaira C. Gozun, and E’van Relle M. Tongol

Mentor: Ms. Lolita G. Bautista

Angeles City Science High School

Project: Hibla: An alternative sound absorption material

5. Jether M. Arenga, John Angel C. Blancaflor, Kyle M. Enorio, Greg Norman C. Millora, and Jericho T. Portez

Mentor: Mr. Jimmy E. Unilongo, Jr.

Philippines Science High School – SOCCSKSARGEN Region Campus

Project: Fortified Trees: Real-time data logging and analysis machine

6. Joshua K. Pardorla, Christian Lawrence C. Cantos, Joefer Emmanuel T. Capangpangan, Dorothy Mae M. Daffon, and John Harold R. Abarquez

Mentors: Mr. Wilfredo K. Pardorla, Jr. and Ms. Almida Plarisan

St. Cecilia’s College – Cebu, Inc.

Project: Design and development of low-cost, high-performance hybrid rocket for Can Satellite deployment applications

 (Read more on their research projects: http://pcieerd.dost.gov.ph/news/latest-news/319-dost-pcieerd-awards-2nd-batch-of-young-innovators)

Opening the program for the MOA signing, Engr. Ermie M. Bacarra, DOST-PCIEERD Human Resource and Institution Development Division (HRIDD) Chief, congratulated the young innovators for being YIP finalists. She also added, “I would like to congratulate their parents for raising such talented and creative children, and praise the officials of the academic institutions that our young innovators represent, for continuously giving them support to follow their aspirations.”

“As a big part of the country’s population is composed of young people, it is only justifiable that we in the DOST, through PCIEERD, also give opportunities to our country’s young minds, hopefully inspiring students to pursue careers in science and technology,” says DOST Secretary Fortunato De la Peňa after commending the second batch of young innovators for their love for Science.

The signing of the MOA means that the grant may be released so that the YIP awardees can now start with their respective researches, with the guidance of DOST-PCIEERD.

 

28 AUGUST 2018—Members of the DATOS Project under the Department of Science and Technology’s Advanced Science and Technology Institute (DOST-ASTI) gathered researchers, stakeholders, and established data scientists to share their knowledge, expertise, and their past and ongoing R&D projects over a cup of coffee in a symposium titled “Data Brew: Data Science Kapihan” held in the DOST-ASTI Training Room.

DOST-ASTI Director Joel Joseph Marciano, Jr. opened the kapihan stating  that “this initiative is to ramp up to meet the challenges that our country faces in terms of what data science, data analytics, and artificial intelligence (AI) can support; that is why we’re reaching out. This is really our effort for you to get to know us, for us to get to know you, and to figure out ways for which we can work together.”

In the morning session of the symposium, project leaders and members presented DOST-ASTI data-science-related projects. Jericho Capito discussed about the institution’s weather stations and the Understanding Lighting and Thunderstorms (ULAT) Project. Harold Bryan Paler talked about the Philippine Earth Data Resource and Observation (PEDRO) Center, a satellite ground receiving station (GRS) that receives and provides space-borne imagery. Jay Samuel Combinido’s presentation was about the S&T infrastructures that they developed: the Philippine Research, Education and Government Information Network (PREGINET), a system that provides high-speed network to facilitate research and education collaborations among academic, government, and research institutions and the Computing and Archiving Research Environment (CoARE), a data storage facility and also serve as high-performance cloud computing facility that allows free access of its services to students, researchers, and data analysts. Roel M. Dela Cruz shared that the DATOS Project aims to address the need for a 24/7 help desk for remote sensing and data science that can support critical activities on disaster mitigation, analysis, and advise using data from CoARE and PEDRO. Jeffrey Aborot presented the details and results of the ASTI Labelling Machine (ALaM) Project. Guided by Balik Scientist Dr. Jose U. Rubrico, the ALam Project’s goal is to develop deep learning models that utilize labeled and georeferenced satellite images as input data.

 

DOST-ASTI resource speakers answering questions from the ‘kapihan’ participants

In addition to these presentations, resource speakers from other public and private institutions contributed to the gathering as well.  Dr. Delfin Jay Sabido and Adrian Cayaco from Stratpoint Technologies Inc., a digital enterprise software solutions company, imparted the importance of AI and machine learning in an enterprise. As the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) is the biggest user of CoARE, Jeffrey Detras, a bioinformatics specialist from IRRI, shared that genomics data is available for analysis, interoperability or the unrestricted sharing of resources between different systems is essential to collaboration, that internship and special problem opportunities are available in his division, and lastly, that AI applications are new to rice researches.

Adrian Cayao, Jeffrey Detras, and Dr. Delfin Jay Sabido await questions from the participants on their presentations

Dr. Enrico Merle, IT Manager of the United Nations Fund for Population Activities (UNFPA), continued the exchange of ideas by showing and emphasizing that population data is essential to a country’s progress and development. The last resource speaker for the morning session is Eugene Villar, President of OpenStreetMap (OSM) Philippines. OSM is a crowd-sourcing mapping effort done by volunteers and is released with an open content. Villar believes that OSM promotes “better demographic intelligence that leads to a better Philippines.”

Eugene Villar and Dr. Enrico Merle during the open forum

In the afternoon session, the ‘Lightning Talks’ commenced wherein each speaker is given 5 minutes for their presentations. 17 resource speakers from various academic, public, and private institutions talked about data science in relation to various fields.

These are the speakers and the topics they presented:

1.Elmer Peramo – Deep Learning with R

2. JC Albert Peralta – Breaking Roads: Impact of Transportation Network Damage on Disaster Relief Logistics

3. Karlo Dela Cruz – Reducing Airline Operating Cost through Improved Forecast Accuracy

4. Patrick Lucanas – Iraya Technologies

5. Shiela Jimenez – Interactive Data Visualization

6. Rafaello Baluyot – Embedding in Natural Language Processing

7. Roel Dela Cruz – Multi-temporal Thermal Analysis of Heavily-Urbanized and Vegetated Areas in Metro Manila

8. Jay Samuel Ombinido – A Convolutional Neural Network Approach for Estimating Tropical Cyclone Intensity Using Satellite-based Infrared Images

9. Danielle Gayare – Linksight on Data Cleaning

10. Karen Faye Bathan – Logistic Regression for Employees’ Attrition Prediction

11. Diony Gullen – The Future of Audit: How Technology is Changing the Audit

12. Rudolph Joshua Candare – Center for Resource Assessment, Analytics and Emerging Technologies of the CARAGA State University

13. Feye Andal – University of the Philippines Resilience Institute – Youth Mappers

14. Allan Sioson – Gateway Software

15. Gabriel Lorenzo Santos – Machine Learning Reinvents Business

16. Narod Eco – Data Science Application in Geoscience Research

17.James Miraflor – Tala ng Bayan Laban sa Kahirapan (People’s Anti-Poverty Database or TALAMBAYAN)

Resource speakers from the first half of the ‘Lightning Talks’

 

Resource speakers from the second half of the ‘Lightning Talks’

After the ‘Lightning Talks’, a data science needs and capabilities identification activity was conducted. The participants were encouraged to write down what they need from and what they can give to the data science community, hopefully paving the way for more collaborations between data scientists.

To end the symposium, Jo Brianne Briones, a member of the DATOS team, thanked the participants for making the kapihan a success. The DATOS team hopes that this will jump-start data science discussions and collaborations.

The initiatives of the DATOS team are implemented by DOST-ASTI and are monitored and funded by the Philippine Council for Industry, Energy, and Emerging Technology Research and Development (DOST-PCIEERD).

Key officials and guests from DOST, UP, JAXA and Embassy of Japan in the Philippines posing with a 1:1 replica of Maya-1 after the successful deployment of the BIRDS-2 cubesats from the ISS. From left to right: Dr. Joel Joseph Marciano, Jr., Director of DOST-ASTI; Mr. Shigeki Kamigaichi, Senior Expert of JAXA,; Minister Atsushi Kuwabara, Consul General of Embassy of Japan in the Philippines; Dr. Fortunato dela Peña, Secretary of DOST; Dr. Michael Tan, Chancellor of UP Diliman; Dr. Evangeline Amor, Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs of UP Diliman; and Dr. John Richard Hizon, Director of UP EEEI. (Photo by DOST-PCIEERD)

 

 Manila, August 10, 2018 — Cheers full of Filipino pride were heard in the University of the Philippines (UP) Diliman Electrical and Electronics Engineering Institute building as officials from UP, the Department of Science and Technology (DOST), the Embassy of Japan in the Philippines, and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) witnessed the live deployment of Maya-1, the Philippines’ first ever cube satellite (CubeSat).

After its turnover to JAXA last May 15, the Maya-1 CubeSat was brought to the International Space Station (ISS) through the SpaceX Falcon 9 CRS-15 on June 29. "This is actually our second major achievement in space science and technology," said UP Diliman chancellor Michael Tan, looking back on the Diwata-1 microsatellite launch on March 23, 2016 from Cape Canaveral and its deployment from the ISS on April 27, 2016.

The development of Maya-1 falls under the BIRDS-2 (Birds Satellite Project), a cross-border interdisciplinary satellite project that accommodates non-space faring countries. The project consists of 11 participating team members from four different countries - Bhutan, Japan, Malaysia and the Philippines. The Philippines was represented throughout the project by two DOST scholars enrolled in graduate studies at the Kyushu Institute of Technology (Kyutech) - Joven Javier from the Advanced Science and Technology Institute (ASTI) of the DOST and Adrian Salces of UP Diliman. Javier, in particular, was designated as Project Manager and led the multinational BIRDS-2 team in the development of the CubeSats.                                                                   

“This aspect of launching [the Maya-1] is a very important step,” says DOST Secretary Fortunato T. de la Peña, in relation to DOST’s current plans on establishing a Space Technology Development Program in the Philippines. According to de la Peña, the said program contains many components – from education, to human resource development, to industry development – capable of producing outputs which can later on be utilized and applied by other agencies. "All of these can be facilitated – since we practically started from zero – by having international collaborations. We do not want to be left out," says de la Peña.

 

 

Manila, July 18, 2018 — The Innovation Council for Industry, Energy, and Emerging Technology (DOST-PCIEERD) recently teamed up with the Science, Technology, Research and Innovation for Development (STRIDE) Program of USAID Philippines through an industry-academe mixer for around 50 participants consisting of academe researchers and industry representatives.

        

Establishing the fusion of science research and business

With the goal to create a progressive S&T industry in the country, the activity aims to bridge the gap between the academe and the industry by bringing them together to ­discuss the latest research findings, updates, and technological trends in their respective fields.

DOST-PCIEERD Deputy Executive Director Engr. Raul C. Sabularse opened the program as he welcomed the guests and recapped the technology transfer efforts of the Council including its collaboration with STRIDE. Sherwin Nones from Integrated Micro-Electronics Inc. also spoke during the program, as well as Rodel Anunciado from ACTICon, shedding light on the modern-day Filipino innovation scene and the vital market elements that apply for universities and companies alike. This was followed by a panel discussion and open forum with Nones, joined by Diane Eustaqio from IdeaSpace, Al Serafica from Xylos Corporation, and Henry Siy from Chemrex Technologies Inc.

Establishing relationships, made easier

The main highlight of the program was the industry-academe mixer activity wherein the participants from the academe were encouraged to pitch their projects and propose technologies to prospective industry partners. Dubbed as a “speed dating” type of activity, researchers were matched with their corresponding industry counterparts, and were allowed a total of a few minutes to concisely pitch their current works from one industry counterpart to another.

Allowing all participants to interact with each other throughout the activity, this activity also helped disrupt the usual way that companies, organizations, and universities communicate. Thus, building their networks and establishing their linkages in a more interesting and interactive way.

The program was concluded by DOST Undersecretary for Research and Development Dr. Rowena Guevarra, who highlighted the importance of collaboration and PCIEERD’s objective to solidify and establish the research community’s entrepreneurial abilities. Usec. Guevarra also emphasized how the event aims to bring both the industry and the academe together to “spread entrepreneurship in research and infuse science in business.”

STRIDE is a project of USAID Philippines that aims to build a network of researchers among universities, private companies, entrepreneurs, and investors who strive for innovation. Over the years, DOST-PCIEERD has been a partner of STRIDE in strengthening this objective among Filipino researchers.