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News Feature:1st SALA session for high school held at UPIS
Game on! The key speakers for SALA participate in a game of Never Have I Ever, the second part of the brown bag session. Photo Credit: Erika Sasazawa.
Students from different high schools attended the brown bag session, SALA: STEM Appreciation for Life-long Application, spearheaded by the College of Education’s Educ 280 class of 2019 on November 9 in the UPIS Auditorium.
Three Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) experts shared how they gravitated towards their field and their experiences in it throughout the years. Through these talks, the event aims to inspire students to pursue STEM careers in the future.
Geospatial Engineering
Aiming for accuracy. Pintor presents one of his projects, which is a 3D map of his home province, Albay. Photo Credit: Erika Sasazawa.
Mr. Ben Hur Pintor, a geospatial engineer, shared his work ethics rooted upon several principles. One of these is to have the courage to be different and to face failure. He stayed true to this when he applied for a job that had a different work environment as compared to what he was used to.
He was accepted as a Data Expert in School of Data, a network committed to advance data literacy globally.
He also advocates openness by promoting the open use of data for research and analysis purposes of the public. He mentions that this privilege of acquiring information should always be accompanied by the ethical use of technology to protect data privacy.
As a “maptivist,” he fulfills his goal of building communities and encouraging participation by co-organizing events under organizations such as Maptime Diliman and Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial Applications (FOSS4G) Philippines.
Coffee Science
Half-filled cup. Garcia shares several challenges faced by the coffee industry namely, limited stock of quality seedlings, lack of modern production techniques, crude post-harvest processing methods, lack of coordination among industry stakeholders, gaps in the collection and distribution of research and technical knowledge, and the popularity of instant coffee. Photo Credit: Erika Sasazawa.
“My only line of 7 in high school was in chemistry,” shared Dr. Emmanuel Garcia on his talk.
Surprisingly, that high school experience served as his drive to pursue Chemistry in college. Today, he is a chemist and a professor at De La Salle University.
Other than his job at the university, Garcia also incorporates chemistry with his interest in coffee that started in 2005 when he encountered Kape Alamid in Cebu.
As he delved deeper into the coffee industry, he realized that there was so much more science to coffee than he thought. Furthermore, his job also requires him to go out of the laboratory to see the actual process of coffee production. This led him to his frequent visits to cafes, farms and other places where coffee is concerned.
He eventually involved himself in activities like Programang Agrikultura Gamit ang Teknolohiya Aron Ayuda sa Bukid Para Asenso Ka (PATABA), organizations like Coffee Science Philippines that aims to close the gap between people and information regarding coffee. He also co-authored a thesis entitled as the “Effect of Pressure on the Particle Size Distribution of Espresso Coffee.”
Forensic Pathology
For the Philippines. Fortun stresses the importance of serving the Philippines by choosing to work in the country. Photo Credit: Erika Sasazawa.
As a student, Dr. Raquel Fortun had the vague idea of becoming a doctor, but since she came from a family of lawyers, she decided in the latter part of her years of studying to specialize in forensic pathology as this field is a mix of law and medicine.
She spent several years studying forensic pathology abroad, but she has always been sure that she would come back to serve the country. She achieved this goal by being the first woman forensic pathologist in the Philippines thus became the reason why she is referred to as the Mother of Forensic Pathology in the Philippines.
Most of her talk focused on the various challenges brought upon by the lack of practice on forensic pathology in the Philippines. She has seen how autopsies were done with no intent on truly identifying the cause of a person's death. In numerous instances, she notices that the cuts on the body were not done right and the body parts were barely touched and observed. Some death report findings were even labeled with "dead on arrival," which she explains is obviously not a finding but a condition of the person before an autopsy even happens.
Being aware of these, she teaches in UP Manila College of Medicine in the hopes of enlightening the students on the situation of forensic pathology in the Philippines and inspiring them to also take a step in serving our country. //by Erika Sasazawa
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