Nathan

Events, Personal

I just got home from Makati. A while ago, the BPI-DOST Best Project of the Year Defense and Awarding Ceremony was held at the BPI main office (Ayala Aenue, cor. Pasong Tamo). We were there to see the different projects and to support our friend.

Before I continue, I would like to congratulate all the winners. I must say they were deserving. The 1st place went to the girl from UP-Diliman whose project was about green fluorescence from alcyonium to detect cancer metastasis or something like that. The 2nd place went to another girl from UP-Diliman whose project was about a protein coat for preventing bungy top disease on abacas. The 3rd place went to the guy from UST, whose project was on biofuel.

With all the congratulatory words in place, I now move on to my reactions and concerns regarding the event.

From the start of the event, I was indeed hopeful that our thesis might be chosen as one of the awardees. When the introduction of the judges came, I told myself that the judges were indeed capable and “great” in their areas of expertise. But there was one thing I noticed, almost all of them were on the field of Biotechnology (Biology, Chemistry, Biochemistry). I wondered at that instant HOW THE HECK will they judge something beyond their expertise. Onwards to giving them the benefit of the doubt. As the presentations were done one by one, I must say that some of the presentors were very good in explaining their works, but they were not that good in defending it. They had very nice ideas and the future contribution of their work is in a very large scale (i.e. humankind for cancer detection and biofuel, and country economy for abaca disease prevention).

When Mango was presenting the thesis, she did great, although she spoke a little bit too fast The judges were there sitting and thinking about what to ask. The first questions were very relevant and very valid. I (or we) was (were) really annoyed when a judge from UP insisted what he thought when he did not really understand how Computer Science works. He consistently and insistently asked how many iterations did we run tests on the system. When Mango answered him for the last time, that we did 288 runs on the system using different files, he said that it was not enough. He said that Computer Science is a science and that in order to say that the testing was enough, you need to run the same thing on the system many times, not only one time. Yeah, it may be true for other sciences, such as Chemistry; but for Computer Science, hell no. When you input the exact same thing using the exact same parameters and exact same settings, you get the exact same thing. When you input something to a function, no matter how many times you try inputting the same thing into it, it will always yield the same result. Argh! However many times you enter 1 + 1 in the calculator, you will always get 2!

I’m not ranting because our thesis lost. I’m ranting, because of the injustice (this word may be too much, but you get the point) done to our work.

Anyway, here are some suggestions to the committee:
1. Pick a diverse group of judges to be able to relate to ALL the topics submitted.
2. If what they are looking for as the best project is one that really benefits the humankind (in terms of medicine, food, transportation, etc.), then some biases against some degrees/courses may be present. Of course, theses or projects that are in Biology or Biochemistry would have the bigger advantage, as opposed to theses from other science fields. So, if this is the case, then have more categories. Or else, it would not be a fair playing ground for the participants.

Enough with the rants. On a lighter note, I really liked the master of ceremonies. I believe her name is Chell Jacob (Associate Director of the BPI Foundation, I think). She was really fabulous with all those spiels and random jokes. I so, so like her And, another good thing to note, the food was great!

Overall, despite with some major disappointments that I have, I know that this event had a very noble aim, and of course what I was ranting about may well just be indirect effects, and one not meant to happen in the first place. Anyway, this awarding for the best science projects should continue in the future. It is indeed a very good thing to have, not only to discover solutions to existing problems, but also to showcase the Filipino talent and skill.

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