On being a scientist in one's home country

(Third of three parts)

(Delivered during the second Convention of Future Scientists last Feb. 27 at De La Salle University Manila)

In the wider front, however, the situation has not improved much. The College of Science in UP Diliman employs between 140 and 150 Ph.D. faculty members during an academic year yet it produces only an annual average of 12.92 Ph.D. and 46.16 M.S. graduates. A desirable annual yield is 40 to 50 Ph.D. graduates since a diligent and productive Ph.D. faculty member should be able to graduate one Ph.D. student for every three academic years. It takes about three years for a bright graduate student to earn his Ph.D. degree after M.S. following the standard Ph.D. curriculum.

The ISI publication of the domestic science community is growing but at a very slow rate when compared to the performance of its ASEAN neighbors. The ISI output of the Philippines crossed the 700-publication mark in 2006. Singapore, on the other hand, did it a long time ago in 1993 and Malaysia and Thailand achieved it in 1999.

In recent years, the Philippine government has substantially increased its budget for scientific research and development as well graduate scholarships in science and engineering. The Department of Science and Technology has more financial resources at its disposal today to fund worthy projects in interdisciplinary research ranging from nanotechnology and photonics to ecology and the environment. Current DOST Ph.D. and M.S. scholarships also offer more realistic stipends.

On Dec. 8, 2006, President Arroyo issued Eexcutive Order 583 establishing the National Science Complex in a 21.9-hectare area of UP Diliman. The amount of P1.7 billion has been allotted within a period of three fiscal years to complete the infrastructure requirement of the National Science Complex and to build a number of technology incubation centers.

The National Science Complex is operated by the College of Science, UP Diliman. It is built to provide a nurturing and enabling environment for Filipino scientists and researchers as they perform their twin tasks of generating new scientific knowledge and training the next generations of scientists and researchers of the country. The technology incubation centers are set up to enable the private sector, particularly the small and medium scale enterprises, as well as other government agencies and institutions, to improve the quality of their products and services by availing themselves of the technical expertise that is available at the National Science Complex. The management skill and experience that are gained from operating the National Science Complex could be used as a future guide in establishing similar such hubs in other parts of the country.

Indeed, these are auspicious times for science in our society. Our youth must take advantage of the situation.

Perhaps you would ask how was I able to overcome the unfavorable socio-economic conditions of doing science here in our homeland. My relative success is a product of several factors — the right skill set, luck, goodwill to peers and colleagues, imagination and foresight, and an enduring belief that Filipino scientists working in the Philippines could compete with the best in the world if they work hard, play by the rules and learn from their mistakes.

Louis Pasteur once said that luck favors the prepared mind. And he was correct.

When I was a graduate student in the 1980s, there were no research laboratories at the National Institute of Physics and I was sent to Osaka University to pursue my dissertation research under a kind and generous Japanese professor. Professor Minami was an optics person and that was how I began my career. It was serendipity that started me in optics and photonics and signal processing. I could have been easily assigned to do thin film deposition research in another school.

Learn to recognize and appreciate the potential of the resources that are already within your reach.

It was during my graduate school days that the computer became personal and reduced to table-top dimensions — developments that permitted many to experiment with computer interfacing, automation and data processing at much less cost. I was able to benefit from that exciting technological development. 

Expectedly, the circumstances that I encountered as a struggling graduate student and then later as a new Ph.D. graduate are not the same as those that are prevailing today. In the early days, I used to mail five hard copies of every manuscript submitted for possible publication in a peer-reviewed journal in the US. At present manuscript submission is done fast and reliably via the Internet — free from the debilitating fear of losing a manuscript during sort-out in the post office. Information now travels much more quickly. On the other hand, the mind is now deluged with so much data and classifying their relative value is non-trivial.

But the core recipe toward success remains the same — it is timeless and universal. Success has much to do with being able to recognize as quickly as possible that fine line that distinguishes imagination from phantasm, focus from narrow-mindedness, steadfastness from stubbornness, dedication from fanaticism. The line that separates virtue from vice keeps moving and is difficult to pin down.

You do not need to be a genius in order to excel. A wise man once explained that he has never met a genius because to him a genius is someone who does well at something he hates. He argued that anybody can do well at something he loves — it’s just a question of finding the right subject. That sage was Clint Eastwood.

Success is a measure of how well we are able to bridge the gap between elegant rhetoric and effective action, between vision and execution, between theory and experimental validation.

As it was eight years ago and as it is today, I expect the Filipino scientist to overcome adversities and become successful. While succeeding is by no means easy or guaranteed, it is not also impossible and the fruits of a hard-earned victory are much sweeter because these fruits are shared with people who are not merely our students or collaborators but more significantly, our blood brothers who share with us the same set of aspirations and dreams for our nation.

Thank you.

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Caesar Saloma has a Ph.D. in Physics, and is a professor at the National Institute of Physics, College of Science, University of the Philippines Diliman. He is presently the Dean of the College of Science and is a member of the National Academy of Science and Technology. He is the recipient of the 2004 Galileo Galilei Award of the International Commission for Optics and the 2008 ASEAN Outstanding Scientist and Technologist Award. He also received the Metrobank Foundation Outstanding Teacher Award (Higher Education category) in 2007. E-mail him at [email protected].