By Vanessa Puno
PALO, Leyte—Eleventh Grader Hillary Diane Andales won for her school, the Philippine Science High School-Eastern Visayas Campus (PSHS-EVC) in Palo, Leyte, a state-of-the-art DNA molecular-biology laboratory worth $100,000 from the Breakthrough Junior Challenge (BJC) in 2016.
As finalist, Andales, 17, emerged as a special awardee for the “Most Popular Vote” in the Popular Vote Challenge with 40,000 likes, shares and 300,000 views in Breakthrough Prize Facebook page in the BJC.
Her video entry explaining an advanced physics concept, called “Feynman’s Path Integrals”, won for Andales the BJC award.
Reynaldo B. Garnace, director of the PSHS-EVC, said the second year of BJC had 6,000 competitors from 146 countries. The awarding ceremony was held in the US in December 2016.
Garnace said the award to Andales entitled her school with a DNA molecular-biology laboratory, together with equipment and other apparatus. The BJC team will set up the $100,000 laboratory this first quarter of 2017 at the school’s newly constructed laboratory and technology building, named Breakthrough Junior Challenge Laboratory.
The BJC is part of Breakthrough Prize, which is founded by Sergey Brin, Anne Wojcicki, Yuri and Julia Milner, Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan, aim at recognizing the best scientific work in Physics, Life Sciences and Mathematics.
Garnace said the laboratory is very much welcome given the need of PSHS-EVC for a laboratory. It should be noted that Supertyphoon Yolanda (international code name Haiyan) on November 8, 2013, has totally destroyed the school’s laboratory and equipment. The laboratory building was refurbished in 2015 only. Garnace said, “Andales explored what she can do by joining the Breakthrough Junior Challenge. She was able to prove herself, and she did it well.”
He said, “The PSHS-EVC aims to produce future leaders in science by providing them state-of-the-art laboratory, so they can give solutions to problems of the country and of the world, and present their papers that will be recognized in the country.”
Andales was among the more than 800 students who were conferred the Youth Excellence in Science Award by the Department of Science and Technology-Science Education Institution early this month.
In her entry to BJC on “Feynman’s Path Integrals”, Andales said it has a universal idea that could be related in science and sociopolitical structures. She related it in simpler concepts and in ordinary daily life in order to encourage understanding among the average person. She said disharmony exists in war-torn countries, which results in destruction, and only peaceful countries in the long term remain in harmony.
According to her, in the chaos that is currently being experienced, a path toward harmony and synergy like the atom exists, and the harmony in universe and sociopolitical structures, and evolution of things and galaxies.
She hopes to achieve her dream with the support of her parents Imelda and Roy Andales, who are science enthusiasts and chemist, to be part of a research team of a famous huge science laboratory abroad after she pursues a degree in Physics.
“A great passion in science for greater society is a great and noble contribution, upholding the fact and truth for the greater development of the country,” she said.
Andales, a junior student of PSHS-EVC, is one of the students who do a research on physics: a simulation of how celestial bodies move because of forces such as gravity.
She currently writes a program for a video on celestial gravity, considering the specific time interval, specific force that affects it, and how fast the celestial bodies are moving.
She said through the detection of the gravitational waves in black holes, we can explore farther what the X-ray spectrum, gamma ray telescope and visible light spectrum can explore.
Garnace said the PSHS-EVC students’ passion for excellence start from Grade 7. They are immersed in laboratory work so they can have their full-blown research conducted in Grade 11 for Earth science, biology, physics and chemistry. They are also provided the opportunities to present research in school, national and international research competitions.