One won an international award; one will lend expertise to a training/meeting abroad; another recently served as instructor for another country’s national event.
These are how three of PNRI’s staff, in the persons of Mr. Chitho Feliciano, Ms. Soledad Castañeda, and Ms. Ma. Teresa Salabit, are contributing to put the Philippines’ best foot forward in the nuclear technology arena.
The work of Mr. Feliciano, who is one of the youngest hires of the Institute, bested more than 200 other research studies in the just-concluded “6th International conference on Isotopes†held in Seoul, Korea, to win the Outstanding Research Award on the Application of Isotope for Life Science Research for his work on Antiproliferative and Radiosensitizing Activity of Grape Seed Extract on human Promyelocytic leukemia Cellsâ€
The paper, which he co-authored with two researchers from the Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute, suggest that grape seed extract is able to effectively inhibit the proliferation of HL-60 (leukemia) cells and has a great potential as a natural radiosensitizing agent.
At the same Conference, Mr. Feliciano was also invited to serve as Chair of the Technical Session on Food Biotechnology and Mutation Breeding.
On the other hand, ms. Soledad Castañeda has been tapped by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to assist in the Training Meeting/Workshop on Isotopic age Determination Techniqueswhich it is organizing on the second week of June at the Argone national Laboratory in Illinois, USA.
Owing to her involvement as project leader in various endeavors in isotope hydrology, Ms. Castañeda has been invited to assist in providing training on the use of tritium-helium dating techniques for groundwater assessment.
The Institute’s regulatory group is also pitching in its own share. Ms. Salabit of the Safeguards Unit has just represented the country in the National Training on Radiation Detection Equipment for Front Line Officers that was conducted in Indonesia last week.
Ms. Salabit was invited by the IAEA to be part of the team that was responsible for the overall delivery of the said Training Course in Jakarta assisting, in particular, with the scheduled practical exercises and providing training lectures as necessary. This is her second such sojourn, having successfully contributed to a similar undertaking in Vietnam a couple of months ago.
All the above had afforded PNRI the opportunity to share its expertise abroad and to highlight Philippine talent in the international nuclear community.
