SPIK 2013 Annual Forum - Nurturing That Much Needed Link

I have always thought that when it comes to research, the Philippines is already bursting with so many ideas. In fact I think the university is  almost saturated with it. We have already proved countless of times that Filipino talent is definitely at par with our counterparts from developing countries. 

While a new idea is always a good thing, I think a larger problem is that these ideas remain just that - a pool of ideas. Majority of thesis studies  are left to dust in their departments, either because it has not found a suitable application/funding, or the momentum to follow it through has simply burned out. 

So I found it very timely that key people from the university, the industry, and the government are now making concrete responses to this need, by initiating a partnership between ERDT, Engineering Research and Development for Technology, and SPIK, Samahan sa Pilipinas ng Industriyang Kimika. Well yes, it is composed mostly of chemical engineers, and related industries, mainly because manufacturing in the Philippines, is 60% composed of companies that are related to the chemicals industry. Being an ERDT scholar, we were required to attend the forum. As chemical plants normally employ a mix of various disciplines, below fields  can also benefit from the forum:

Civil Engineering

Chemical Engineering

Industrial Engineering

Materials Engineering

Mechanical Engineering and

Environmental Engineering

The main goal is to create a government-industry-academe linkage, with the following roles:

Government - provision of scholarships, funding, necessary legislation, and support on the national level of the programs

Academe - provision of capable manpower and environment for research, laboratory facilities, intellectual know-how

Industry partner - commercialization, funding, mass production/ implementation of results

It is a 3 - way collaboration, and a win-win-win solution for all those involved. The university gets the funds, and is able to produce studies of REAL economic value, companies get to solve their problems and save on R&D expenses, and government gets to include these on their lists of accomplishments. Lol. 

The SPIK forum is a whole day event held last December 10, 2013 at the Engineering theater of UP Diliman. The program involved keynote speeches in the morning and  a workshop in the afternoon. 

The speeches were all very inspiring. The first was from Atty. Jose Ma. Ochave of Unilab who stressed the importance of challenging comfort zones and "disrupting the dominant paradigms". This was Unilab's strategy to achieve its current market leading status. I also noticed the usefulness of customer profiling for defining very specific service or products to their customers.

The second speech was from Gerard Khonghun of Salinas Corporation. At first I didn't know what to expect from this speech because I was like "what do you expect from salt?". But I soon learned the weird fact that in spite of the fact that we have one of the largest shorelines in the world, we actually IMPORT 80% of our salt consumption! This is because the erratic weather has damaged our salt farms and wasn't able to cope up since. This is where the SPIK partnership comes in, by providing researchers to come up with ways to produce salt without having to rely on the weather. 

The last talk was from Bayer, where the importance of regulating plastic wastes was emphasized. We watched a video where bears just dropped dead because of all the plastic that they have taken, which accumulated in their tissues and bloodstream. It was heartbreaking. 

During the afternoon, a workshop was held to match the participating companies and students. The companies would present their needed technological advancements or problems, and the students would take on these topics for their thesis. SPIK is composed of 35 companies from the following fields:

• Inorganic

• Agrichemicals & Fertilizers

• Oleochemicals & Surfactants

• Surface Coatings

• Specialty Chemicals

• Petrochemicals & their Derivatives

• Petroleum and Petroleum Products

• Plastics & Polymers-related

• Industrial & Specialty Gases

• Chemical Service Providers

I found it really cool because this was industry and academe partnership happening right there. It was facilitated by my current professor in our Technopreneurship class, Luis Sison, PhD. The companies had their research needs outlined, together with the needed background for the future researcher, and the students would check out the list and choose a project that he/she thinks she could contribute to. It wasn't very applicable to me though because I'm already working on my thesis. But I think this  is a great way to kickstart the linkage. I hope this extends to all other courses of engineering, and other industries. 

There were talks on extending the internship of the students from 3-5months, to 2 years, I think that's a total pain for the parents who pay for their tuition, and they won't always be taken too seriously because they're "only interns", but being involved in research per se will be able to give the students an immediate crash course on the company with a foreseeable result in a certain span of time. 

Being able to include tie-ups like these in most universities will be able to improve job security among students, and will increase the excitement towards research because they know it is of real value to the industry at large. SME's, especially those that fall in the "Medium" category will very much benefit on this because they are able to have access on a pool of researchers without spending a fortune. 

Forums and seminars like these make me thankful for my current setup and schedule. I'm keen on learning updates on technology and manufacturing, on a larger scale, and I'm looking forward to more events like these in the future.  :-)