Punongbayan kids seek national scientist award for dad

The children of the late Dr. Raymundo Punongbayan, former director of the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (Philvocs), would like their father to be posthumously awarded the prestigious "National Scientist" award.

Punongbayan, along with eight Philvocs and military personnel, died in a helicopter crash in Gabaldon, Nueva Ecija, on April 28.

He and his team were on a mission to assess safe sites for the resettlement of communities displaced by typhoons in 2004 in Aurora and Nueva Ecija.

"Being a simple man, Daddy would not have liked it (the award). But in all humility, we would ask the government that he be declared a National Scientist," eldest daughter Lulu told the STAR yesterday.

Lulu said the award would be a fitting recognition for a man who died poor but rich in the "wealth of his name" and the passion he had for his work as Philvocs director and geoscientist.

Punongbayan was Philvocs director from 1983 to 2002.

He graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in Geology from the University of the Philippines in 1960 and obtained his Ph.D. in Geology from the University of Colorado in 1972.