Electronics, Energy, Biotechnology Innovations
Gregory Tangonan Interview
Aside from your recommendation for the establishment of a similar institution like the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI), what are Comste’s recommendations?
We have proposal for an industry that’s destined to grow—energy. It’s a joint electronics-energy project. If we just stay in one sector, we’re not going to have something bold, something strategic, something new.
We want to deploy solar panels, solar systems that are green technology. It’s something they’re doing in California, India, China, and Australia.
Thomas Friedman’s book “Hot, Flat, and Crowded” tells Americans to innovate, innovate, to make a green revolution. That’s from a country that’s a champion of innovation and saying ‘We’ve lost our way.’ The green revolution will recreate America, regenerate its creative juices, and will also save a lot of money in building new technology. The Americans are very serious about it.
What about us?
We want to put up 5,000 solar systems for lighting, education, entertainment, internet access, and clean water. We’ll get the panels from Sun Power and other people. If we have to import, (we hope it’s for) no tax at all. We’ll start building. We’ll make the extra electronics, the inverters. All the other components should be Philippine-made or assembled.
We’ll deploy these in agricultural communities through local governments, use them in clever ways, and release the typical Pinoy resourcefulness. We’ll liberate our farmers. It’s not hard core electronics, but it will create a market for our own green technology rather than we waiting for what the Australians, Japanese, Thais will sell us.
It will be in small communities that are cut off in time of disaster. Some of them don’t have power. They have no grid at all.
We’ll use solar power to give clean water. One of the basic needs of our people is clean drinking water. We can store rain water. Use solar power to charge the battery and pump water through a filter. You can run the water through a UV to get the pathogens out. We could clean with the UV system like two gallons. If you give people stable, clean water solutions, people won’t get sick (and become productive). Kids can study.
Is it viable?
It’s very viable. We found out El Nido use it (water-purifying system) in its resort. They’re not using solar power. They have their own power. But they harvest rain water and save themselves a lot of money as opposed to desalination ‘cause there’s no water you can get by drilling in Palawan. If power comes from solar or wind, then people will have something they will want to own in their community.
If you put these systems in small fishing villages, we will find other things to do with it like using water to clean fish.
We’ve approached Sun Power so we can work on clean water. We’ll work on generating hydrogen from electrolysis so we could use it for fuel cells.
How much is the cost? Who can finance it?
One of these two kilowatt (KW) systems probably costs $10,000. But over 10, 20 years if it’s providing all these and we did all the electronics, we will have created an industry, maybe form companies, and apply it to agriculture and aquaculture before anybodyelse did.
We also like to propose aggressively building 10-megawatt facilities. Maybe USAID (United States Agency for International Development) can finance. If we think very small, we can only get small results. But if we think ourselves collaborating with other countries, we get the expertise. Aside from solar photovoltaic, there may be other systems like solar thermal we’d rather do. We can do hybrid –wind, solar– and change the landscape of our remote areas.
We’ll design (electronics systems). That’s where ERDT (Engineering Research and Development for Technology) can help—in designing this 2.5 KW system.
How about your other energy technologies, the algae for oil, at Ateneo Innovation Center (AIC)?
People are working all over the world on algae for oil. At Ateneo, we’ve been working on the use of LEDs (light emitting diode). The light from LED is tuned to the right wavelength that the algae absorbs the most. We can grow them faster. We (need to) also have the right species. We have many species in the Philippines. Combine them in the photo-bioreactor, feed them the right food.
In other countries they have genetically modified (GM) algae. We don’t have that. But we like to build our own basic work (so that later) we’ll be able to work with Australians working on GM algae or team with the Americans.
(With an LED), we’re doing photosynthesis in a kind of artificial way. We’re fooling the algae by giving him the wavelength he’s most sensitive to, but we’re taking energy from all other light rays that he likes.
Algae don’t like short wavelength. That harms them. We’ll take all of that energy, and put that in a battery, convert it, and then come back at another light. The whole system is like an artificial photosynthesis. We started that in 2007. Now we’re building a generator or reactor.
What is the role of the private sector here?
(Aquaculture firm) Alsons’ role has been crucial. It’s a very good example of how an industry can lead us. They need to grow algae for food for fish, for tilapia. They know how to feed the fish. They know species control. Up to now they grow the algae out in the sun, just out in the open. But it’s very difficult to control the contaminants that way.
You can poison the whole fish farm if the wrong algae starts to grow. (That’s why) Alsons is very interested in a more controlled growth so they can grow 100 % of a particular species, grow them faster, fatter, and there are no contaminants. (And) if they can get other kinds of algae they want, they could grow other kind of species like crabs.
The industry-academe partnership will help a lot. We’ll know what’s hot, what’s not. What we’re developing is guided by what the industry really wants which is really what the university should do.
Why pretend that after five years they’re going to wait for your result? That model never worked anywhere.
What are the other companies you’re working with?
One of the persons we’re talking to on electronics is with Circuit Solutions. Of course some faculty members at Ateneo have their own blue chip design company. We’re talking to companies like Japan Radio Corp. (JRC) on microwave products for wireless communications.
You’ve been working on SMS (short message service) researches at Ateneo. Please brief us.
We pride ourselves on having set our world record on New Year’s Day, 1.5 billion text messages.
(But transmission was) really bad on New Year’s Day. On normal situations, 11%, 18%, 23% is being lost. Even if you have two cellphones on, 15% is being lost. If one is off, it loses 23%. If I do double message, the sending goes down to 32% (one of the two sets of messages, for example, is lost).
We would send hundreds of texts in a day on normal days, during a coup d’etat at Mandarin, from Quezon City to Ilocos, students sending it to one another. We find it interesting, (out of) 50 messages, 20 are missing, 30 sent.
We measured overall efficiency of the networks– Globe to Globe, Smart to Smart, Sun to Sun– for several months. We developed a quality rating for the networks– if the message sent was received. If received, how fast did it take, what fraction gets there.
We sent messages, used the computer and bluetooth connection, logged receipt of the messages, and measured how many got there. NTC (National Telecommunications Commission) was shocked. All the networks are clogged, running at 95, 90, almost 99% of their capacity.
This is the kind of thesis our undergraduates do. We’re really proud.
How can we use your researches?
You can predict Brazil is going to be like this, Venezuela, all the African countries because texting is the cheapest mode of communication. So how badly we do here will reflect later on others, unless somebody comes up with a new architecture.
Until people complain, networks won’t increase capacity. It’s incumbent on us to get this hard data because networks won’t do it on their own.
If we monitor the service, it can change the kind of negotiation (in telecommunications). But nobody’s talking about quality of service. We’re trying to build a computer model on what the demand is. If you have this, the pricing model will change.
We rely on our cellphones so much, but the network gets worst in times like typhoon when you need to pick up your niece. They shut down power before the typhoon comes. So the base stations are on battery power, and there’s a chance that important messages will not go through.
(Later), we’ll be able to predict inter-operator (Globe to Smart, for example) efficiency. In between network, it will be very bad.
In a sense, our research is consumer-based. But we want the students to understand, is there another way to build the cellphone architecture so we can handle more traffic?
If we have a system like a distributed architecture which again is another research, we may be able to text and text one billion per day and get a quality of service that not even two percent gets lost. Vendors like Nokia, Ericsson are working on things like that. It’s also where we can work with them.
Does that involve cost?
Probably not so much investment because a lot of these use existing technology, except that you’re not using the wireless throughout. You can actually use the internet.
What’s really AIC’s vision?
We want to be known as a place that’s extremely industry-friendly. You can come, ask your questions. If there’s a technology you like to learn about, we could help you. If you need the expertise of some of our people, hire them as consultant. If you want to form a company, go ahead. We want to be all of those things.
What are you doing on biomedicine?
We do things like those for acupuncture, monitoring the skin, developing low cost tomography, developing medical database, doing urinalysis using cellphone. I wouldn’t wanna say this looks like a winner. But we have 15 projects going on at various stages, and the majority have industry participation.
Why is collaboration so important?
If you want to do basic Chemistry or Math, you can do it on your regular department. But when you are on more complex problems like algae for oil, cleaning up of piggery and extracting energy from those, that’s a multidisciplinary problem. It takes a biologist, a chemist, an electronics person, a wireless person, and one who works on a computer model. Those are the kinds of problems that require new ways of approaching and typically interdisciplinary.
Almost every organization around the world is forming some kind of an institute to do multidisciplinary, really hard problems.
Working on a biomedical device requires an engineer, a medical personnel, a physicist who understands the science, and biochemist. We need to form organizations like that.
What is your work on rain sensors about?
We’re building a national rain sensor, so we can alarm people when rain got to say 50 millimeters per hour. We’re building a system using microwave that you can monitor. That requires engineering people, microwave people like JRC. We now have a unique approach for a disaster rain alarm. If it’s using existing infrastructure of the cellphone, even wireless Smartbro, we can turn that into a rain sensor too. That’s completely new.
You can monitor performance of the microwave links and then you can also measure the rain. These things are all over the Philippines. In almost every small town you go, there’s a cellphone tower. And those towers are connected by microwave links. So by monitoring power and those microwave links, we can measure the rain. It’s scalable to the whole nation because these equipments are all over, but which is never measured.
We did our own study for the last three years. We monitored the transmitter, received power changes with rain. We developed an acoustic rain sensor. It cannot predict disaster, but maybe forewarn people in potential areas where there could be flooding or landslide. We work with agencies like the Manila Observatory that has all the land use maps.
This is an example of a multidisciplinary work. But if you can’t form those kinds of team, sorry you can’t have it.
What strength do we have in the biomedical technology?
We have electronic people who can make loop circuits. We can build these devices here.
We have doctors who can use it, doctors in America who can use it. That’s a major.
Our doctors may be willing to support it, but we’re not talking in one big voice in organizing ourselves. We’re talking about medical tourism. But what’s the front and end for medical tourism?
(The idea) is before a person gets here, he’s already in the web. He’s already interacting with doctors here on his blood pressure, all these vital signs through the cellphone, through the internet. So we should be building that interface.
This is not brand new. So many schools have been making low-cost ECG machines. In the States, you can probably buy a personal ECG machine for $200. But that will go nowhere. But if we wire them up, we have an interface. We’ll put them in small villages where people will upload their ECG everyday. We can build telemedicine. That’s a revolution. That’s doing something different.
How can we get everybody organized for this?
We can form a consortium of hospitals– St. Luke’s, Medical City, PGH– electronic companies, doctors, universities, and maybe investors, and link them to the local government.
One will build the ECG, another will make the GSM modem so it can communicate. We’ll build and get products more reliable. We’ll do it locally and we can actually export those things that the Japanese don’t do well.
We can propose these and let politicians do legislations to make something like this happen. We have major advantages, but we don’t configure ourselves to exploit them. That’s our fault.
By proposing a consortium, we can attack lets say a barangay level medicine, improving their system by 10 times. We can think about what technologies will support medical tourism. That’s really really big.
How important is forming consortiums?
If you’re gonna attack a problem like barangay medical tourism where 60% of people haven’t seen a doctor all their lives, then you need all the brains that you can.
Dr. Gregory L. Tangonan is AIC director and Congressional Commission on Science Technology, and Engineering director, He was Hughes Research Laboratory Director; holder of 38 US patents, and a Ph. D holder in Applied Physics from the California Institute of Technology.
