april 2013
U.P. News 9
UP mentors write for French monograph on Phl
Pinoy students shine in AsiaPacific cyber research contest By Marlon C. Magtira (abridged)
Three Filipino students competing in an international cybersecurity research contest have made it to the top 15 finalists. They are Computer Science senior students Ivan Dominic Baguio and John Ultra, both of the University of the Philippines, and Marvin Rey Garcia of the Polytechnic University of the Philippines. The contest dubbed “The Kaspersky Lab Asia Pacific and Middle East and Africa (APAC and MEA) Cup 2013” is an annual international student event “aimed at encouraging research into information security across related fields to push the boundaries of knowledge and academic study into application/ Research papers submitted by undergraduate to post-graduate students from the region were vetted by a panel of academicians and Kaspersky Lab analysts. Kaspersky Lab is a global developer of secure content and threat management solutions. This year’s theme of the contest held at the National University of Singapore was “Cybersecurity for the Next Generation.” This was the second time the Philippines reached the regional finals in the annual event. The first time was in 2012 when a research paper authored by Joshua Arvin Lat and teammates Rod Bondoc and Kevin Atienza from UP Diliman was shortlisted for the Asia Pacific and Middle East Asia round. The team later bagged the first prize in the final round of the Kaspersky Lab International Conference in the Netherlands, for their paper on a secure online USB login system. “Competition is stiff, not just for the attractive cash prizes of $1,000, $750 and $500 for the top three places, but also for the opportunity to gain exposure at the international level. All team leaders of the research papers
are automatically accorded free travel and accommodation packages, plus a guided tour of the host city,” Kaspersky said. Ultra’s solo research paper titled, “A Collaborative Access Control Model for E-voting Systems” proposes a new method for modeling and enforcing separation of duty (SoD) in computer system like the one used in electronic system (e-voting). SoD is a popular approach to minimize fraud and error in high integrity tasks. Ultra proposes an intuitive and easy to use method for enforcing SoD on tasks performed on computer system which can be used to raise the integrity of election administrative tasks performed on an evoting system. Baguio and co-author John Carlo Florencio entr y titled “On-the-f ly Encryption for Android Devices” seeks to address the limitations of Android devices in encrypting disks or external memory in real time. The other top finalists were students from Indonesia’s Bandung Institute of Technology, City University of Hong Kong, South Africa’s Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, Australia’s University of Technology, Iran’s Shiraz University, Japan’s Institute of Information Security, India’s KIIT University and the Malaysian institutes University of Malaya, Universiti Teknologi MARA, and Multimedia University. The three best papers from this round will represent the region and compete against other regional qualifiers from North America, South America, Europe, Russia and Commonwealth Independent States at the international and final round. This will be held at the Royal Holloway, University of London in the United Kingdom in June 2013.
h t t p : / / m a n i l a s t a n d a r d t o d ay. com/2013/03/19/ph-shines-in-globaltech-research-contest/
graduates. During the launch, Garachon acknowledged the significance of the Franco-Filipino collaboration for the monograph w h i ch h e s a i d “provides key elements for understanding the [local] situation in the conceptualization of concrete projects in the Philippines” such as research prog rams, i n v e s t m e n t s , (Clockwise from top left) Malay, Tan, Zablan, Luna development, and Philippine Contemporaines will eventually humanitarian projects. be made locally available through the A press statement of the French French Embassy which said that although Embassy quoted IRASEC director Francois the monograph is written in French, there Robinne as saying during the launch the is a possibility for future projects between publication “does not only help put the French and Filipino researchers to be Philippines back on the map in the domain published in English. of social sciences, but also brings together Tan lloks forward to having a version of the work of 16 Filipino researchers.” Philippine Contemporaines for Filipino readers. “Philippine Philippine Contemporaines is exactly what “I would really like to see this [monograph] we at IRASEC want our collaborations translated into English and made available with local researchers and institutions to for Filipinos, because this is not a tourist be: rigorous academic research that offers guidebook, but an academic [work] that new and innovative analyses on important isn’t too heavy. It is something the UP Press themes,” he added. might want to consider.” Photo from http://conversation.lausanne.org/uploads/ Photo from http://i-p-o.org/up-manila-faculty.htm accounts/profile_images/10251/10214_150_-1.JPG
Manuel Victor J. Sapitula, who was assistant professor at the Department of Sociology, College of Social Sciences and Philosophy, and is currently a doctorate student in Sociology at the National University of Singapore; Dr. Elisabeth Luquin, senior lecturer in Filipino and Philippine literature at the National Institute of Oriental Languages and Cultures in Paris, who is currently an exchange professor in UP Diliman; and Dr. JC Gaillard, Associate Professor at the School of Environment of the University of Auckland in New Zealand, who is a visiting professor at UP Diliman. Dean Tan, who was invited to deliver a message during the launch of the monograph last March 13 at the newlyrenovated Alliance Francaise de Manille in Makati, considers it an honor that UP people are able to contribute to the publication. “I am really hopeful that this [monograph] would give more attention to the efforts of the French to understand the Philippines,” he said. He added that French Ambassador to Manila Gilles Garachon explained during the launch that the monograph basically targets the French people, especially those interested in Southeast Asia, particularly the Philippines. Tan also recalled his meeting with the French commercial attaché, who told him that the biggest French company in the Philippines, Teleperformance, employs UP
Photo from https://www.facebook.com/mulatpinoy
Four prominent UP faculty members and two French exchange professors in UP Diliman, are among the contributors in a monograph on contemporary Philippine society launched recently by the French Embassy. They are Prof. Emmanual M. Luna of the College of Social Work and Community Development; Dr. Armando S. Malay, Jr., former Dean of the Asian Center; Dr. Michael L. Tan, dean of the College of Social Sciences and Philosophy (CSSP); and Dr. Zelda C. Zablan, retired professor and erstwhile director of the UP Population Institute. Twenty-four French and Filipino writers and researchers have been invited to contribute original pieces for the scholarly book, entitled Philippines Contemporaines (Contemporary Contemporary Philippines Philippines). The project is being spearheaded by the Institut de Recherche sul l’Asie du Sud-Est Contemporaine (IRASEC), a Bangkokbased French research institute dedicated to studying the political, social and environmental evolution in eleven countries in Asia. With over 600 pages, the monograph was divided into six sections featuring articles on the Philippines’ colonial past, environmental and risk management, education, foreign relations, health and medicine, and a special chapter on Mindanao, among others. Also among the contributors were
Photo from kssp.upd.edu.ph
By Celeste Ann Castillo Llaneta
Kapampangan artist wins in London photo tilt By Mariz Hernandez
A photographer and artist from Pampanga took his craft to greater heights when he bagged the third prize in the Sony World Photography Awards 2013 held in London last April 25. Ruston Banal bested 44 entries from all over the world in the contest’s culture category. Banal’s winning entry labeled “Ritual Dance of Kuraldal” depicted ritualistic merrymaking in Betis, Guagua, Pampanga marking a local feast that includes frenzied dancing and splashing water on people in the streets. The tradition was said to be of preSpanish origin which over time blended into the religious rites of the area. Banal’s photo was shown digitally as part of the 2013 Sony World Photography Awards Exhibition held at the Somerset House in London, April 26-May 12.
“This award is something that I offer to my hometown, as homage to its rich cultural heritage and tradition,” Banal said. Banal is a Fine Arts graduate (magna cum laude) from the University of the Philippines Diliman, major in Art History and Minor in Painting. After graduation, he went home to Betis in 2006 where he stayed for good on account of his passion for cultural advocacy. Banal lectured in Art History and Theory at the De La Salle University (CSB Design Foundation), as well as at the University of the East College of Fine Arts and Ateneo de Manila University. (Article and photo grab from http:// www.sunstar.com.ph, as re-posted in http://centralfocus.ixi.ph/2013/03/22/ renowned-kapampangan-artist-winslondon-based-photography-tilt/ )