On being a scientist in one's home country

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

On Feb. 20, 2001 I gave a lecture entitled “My Expectations of the Filipino Scientist” after receiving the first
Concepcion Dadufalza Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Faculty Center of the University of the
Philippines Diliman. The Dadufalza Award was established by the University of the Philippines System to keep
alive the ideals of Professor Concepcion Dadufalza, a teacher of English who influenced several generations of
UP Diliman students during her long and memorable career as a public servant. Fortunately, she was able to
attend the first awarding program. Unfortunately, I did not become one of her students. Professor Dadufalza
passed away in December 2004.

My talk appeared in the newsletter DOST SignPost, Volume 20, Number 8 (August 2002 issue) and the Diliman
Review, a journal that is jointly published by the College of Arts and Languages, College of Social Sciences and
Philosophy and College of Science of UP Diliman. An electronic copy could also be downloaded from the
website, bahaykuboresearch.net.

In my 2001 Dadufalza lecture, I mentioned a number of deliverables that I expected (and continue to expect)
Filipino scientists and researchers to deliver in the course of pursuing scientific research in our own country.

I expect every Filipino scientist to work toward building a culture of science in our society. He or she would help
establish a rich scientific tradition that all Filipinos can be proud of. Excellence in the basic and applied science
and mathematics is about performing well and consistently. Excellence does not become a way of life in a society
that does not possess a sense of history regarding the past contributions of its scientists, researchers and
technologists. Scientific tradition is forged by generations of individuals ceaselessly pushing the limits of scientific
knowledge.

Scientific tradition does not emerge simply by chance. It results from conscious, coordinated and sustained effort
by many sectors of society — from the private and non-governmental organizations to the government. Among
these sectors, the academe plays the most crucial role in the task of tradition building. Academics are in a unique
position since they are not beholden to short-term interests nor encumbered by the profit motive. They form the
frontline in the training of future generations of scientists and intellectuals of society.

Scientific research is not easy to perform in our country since it requires a support infrastructure that allows
effective recruitment of young talent as well as efficient procurement and delivery of research equipment and
materials. Our society is still in the process of building the foundations of such an infrastructure. Doing research
here is still like wading through shallow muddy waters — one small step forward already requires huge amounts
of energy and momentum.

A great institution of higher learning is characterized by the excellence of its graduate programs. It is the quality
of the Ph.D. degree program, not B.S. nor M.S., that sets the reputation of a science or engineering department.
This is because a Ph.D. degree is a research degree that is awarded to a graduate student after he has
contributed something new to the body of scientific knowledge. The said requirement is consistent with the goal
of science, which is to improve the accuracy of our understanding of how Nature works.
According to the highly respected university ranking system that was developed by Shanghai Jiao Tung
University, the strength of a university is measured by the number of Nobel prize and Fields medal winners
among its alumni and in its faculty and staff, the number of highly cited researchers and the publications produced
by its staff in the high-impact journals Science and Nature and other peer-reviewed journals that are abstracted
in the Science Citation Index and the Social Science
It is evident that publication in a peer-reviewed journal is the single most important measure of scientific
productivity — the fundamental building block of one’s scientific career. No one has ever been awarded the
Nobel Prize in Physics, Chemistry or Medicine without publishing at least one original scientific paper. Not even
the quintessential scientist Albert Einstein who received the Prize in 1921 for his work on the photoelectric effect
and quantum theory.

I expect faculty members to supervise Ph.D. students. Hence, faculty members who teach in graduate programs
must have the desired Ph.D. degrees. Many Philippine universities have difficulty offering competitive graduate
programs in the sciences and engineering due to the lack of qualified Ph.D. degree holders in their faculty roster
— not more than 10 percent of faculty members in our higher education system today are Ph.D. degree holders.

Moreover, only a small fraction of Ph.D. faculty members in leading Philippine universities, including the
University of the Philippines, have successfully mentored Ph.D. students. The lack of competent Ph.D.
supervisors continues to be the most glaring weakness of our higher education system today.

Great mentors are the most effective recruiters of young scientific talents. They play a key role in containing
the diaspora of young Filipino scientific talents to the G-7 countries. The brain drain is not caused by lack of
patriotism but by the narrowness of the spectrum of viable graduate programs that are available locally.

That our best B.S. graduates continue to prefer studying abroad and that they could easily find assistantship
positions or scholarships in US, European or Japanese universities is a cause of concern. It means that their
science or engineering departments have failed to convince them to pursue graduate studies locally and help
build a scientific tradition in the home country.

I expect every scientist to understand that no area in science and technology is more important than others. In
the same token, no scientific discipline is more difficult than others. A scientist should not blame his field for his
poor research performance. Doing so is like a ship captain complaining about the sea.

The skill and confidence of a Ph.D. student are acquired through long hours of experimentation and analysis,
and regular interactions with his supervisor and fellow students in research meetings and seminars. His training
is a shared experience that is enriching to both his supervisor and fellow graduate students. The life of a scientist,
no matter how accomplished he might be, is always marked by daily attempts to understand Nature more clearly
and accurately.

It has been eight years and seven days since I wrote my Dadufalza lecture. In that span of time, I authored or
co-authored more than 50 papers in SCI-indexed journals in the US and Europe and successfully graduated 12
Ph.D. students at the National Institute of Physics. I also received two international awards, the Galileo Galilei
Award from the International Commission for Optics in 2004 and the triennial ASEAN Outstanding Scientist and
Technologist Award from the ASEAN Committee on Science and Technology in 2008. I am particularly pleased
with these awards since they were won based on scientific accomplishments that were achieved with colleagues
and students at the National Institute of Physics. In our own little way, we have shown that Filipinos could perform
good science in their own country.

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 Executive 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.

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.