A Filipino physicist who pioneered in the Philippines research on cutting-edge photonics won the top prize in an Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) Science and Technology competition.
Dr. Caesar Saloma, 48, garnered the Asean Outstanding Scientist and Technologist Award for leading the Instrumentation Physics Laboratory-National Institute of Physics of the University of the Philippines in developing a method to generate high-contrast images of semiconductor sites via one photon optical beam-induced current imaging and confocal reflectance microscopy. The project received a US patent in 2007.
Saloma is also the current dean of the University of the Philippines College of Science.
His victory was announced at the opening ceremonies of the eighth Asean Science and Technology Week at the World Trade Center in Pasay City. The week coincided with the country’s celebration of National Science and Technology Week.
He received from President Gloria Arroyo a medal and a $10,000 cash prize.
Saloma’s novel biophotonics and nanomaterials research has applications in the biomedical and industrial domains. Photonics is the science and technology of generating, guiding and detecting light energy and used in detecting nanomaterials or physical matter less than a micron (or one-millionth of a meter) in size.
His team’s patented device also has practical applications for the Philippine semiconductor industry, one of the country’s sunrise industries. Saloma has personally published more than 80 papers in leading optics and applied physics journals in the United States and Europe.
Another winner was Dr. Liza Ng Fong Poh, 35, a Singaporean molecular virologist who was awarded the Asean Young Scientist and Technologist Award. She led her country’s development of a diagnostics kit to quickly detect severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in suspected avian-flu victims.
Ng was handed out $5,000 and a medal for having led the development of a field-testing device to diagnose avian flu as the pandemic began ravaging East Asia in 2003.
She has since then made several improvements on this device. She now forms part of the core group of Asean scientists creating a regional database on SARS that could be used for drug discovery research, mapping and prediction of disease spread and other related purposes.
The Asean Science and Technology Week celebrations are held every three years with each Science Minister of the regional association’s 10 member-countries meeting together to discuss programs to promote better and increased scientific development and cooperation with each other. Asean member-countries take turns in hosting the event. Asean groups Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
The Philippine Department of Science and Technology is hosting this year’s Asean Science and Technology Week this July 7 to 11, coinciding with its 50th anniversary and National Science and Technology Week.
The awards are given to scientists and technologists whose outstanding achievements in their fields of expertise have gained national and international recognition. Nominees must all be from Southeast Asia.
Other previous Filipino recipients of the awards were Bienvenido Juliano in 1998 and Lourdes Cruz in 2001. ––Ike Suarez and Ben Arnold De Vera, Manila Times
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