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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
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