By EDD K. USMAN | Twitter: @edd1819 | Instagram: @bluestar0910 | Facebook: SDN — SciTech and Digital News
Short link: https://wp.me/paaccn-qtD
NAIA TERMINAL 3, Pasay City, 23rd February 2023 — Businesses, the academe, and governments are in the thick of future-proofing their operations as innovation from new technologies continues to emerge fast-paced.
Indeed, the digital era is unforgiving for those who fail to join the digital transformation journey. They are left to eat digital dust.
Luckily for the Mindanao State University (MSU), there’s the Philippine Council on Energy, Emerging Technology Research and Development (PCIEERD), the Innovation Council of the Department of Science and Technology (DOST).
And that, apparently, led to a collaboration between the DOST-PCIEERD and the MSU System under the leadership of President Basari Mapupuno, a lawyer. DOST is headed by Secretary Renato U. Solidum, Jr., and PCIEERD under Executive Director Enrico “Eric” C. Paringit, the “the father” of many of the Innovation Council’s research and development (R&D products that help make the lives of Filipinos a little bit better.
And the product of the collaboration between PCIEERD and MSU is the high-tech Optoelectronics Science Laboratory (OSL) funded by the former with a Php10.07 million budget.
On Friday, 24th February, PCIEERD and MSU will inaugurate the laboratory, signaling that it is now open for business. The OSL is under the university’s Physics Department, College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics.
A team from PCIEERD led by Paringit will travel to Marawi City, Lanao del Sur, for the inauguration ceremony of the OSL.
The program will start in the morning of Friday with a Welcome Remarks from Johnny Jim S. Ouano, PhD; Messages from Paringit and Mapupuno; a Plenary Presentations by Dr. Florencio Recoleto, Jr., director, MSU-Sindangan Extension, and project leader of IDP Project: Establishment of MSU-Marawi Optoelectronics Science Laboratory; Message and Toast by Eng’r Rodrigo S. Baid, MSc; Ribbon Cutting, and other sidelights of the program.
A Media Brief from PCIEERD said the OSL is a research facility established “to serve the graduate and undergraduate physics and related programs of MSU Marawi, as well as academic institutions in the BARMM, Region X, and businesses in Iligan and Cagayan de Oro City.”
BARMM is the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, a new political entity (NPE) established in 2019 through the Bangsamoro Organic Law (BOL). The BOL implements the 2014 Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro (CAB), a product of 17 years of peace negotiations between the Philippine government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).
PCIEERD pointed out in the Media Brief that the creation of the OSL is rooted in the increase of enrollment in MSU generated by the scholarship grants from the Science and Education Institute (DOST-SEI). Thus, a need for a research lab became necessary for the university’s Master of Science (MSc) Physics program.
Learners, educators, and researchers are the target beneficiaries of the OSL.
Republic Act No. 1387 as amended established the MSU on September 1, 1961, a brainchild of the late Senator Domacao Alonto. He sought the MSU’s creation “as one of the government’s responses to the so-called ‘Mindanao Problem'”.
Thus, “It is the only university directly charged by the government to advance the cause of national unity and actively pursue integration through education.” (✓)
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Sources: DOST-PCIEERD, Wikipedia