The Los Baños Science Community Foundation Inc. (LBSCFI) and UPLB will be holding its three-day celebration of the SyenSaya on July 16-18.

SyenSaya, a science and technology festival, stems from the celebration of the National Science and Technology Week and is a science tourism program, the first of its kind in the Philippines and in Southeast Asia.

Dr. Luis Rey I. Velasco, UPLB chancellor and president of the LBSCFI, said that the festival aims to promote the town of Los Baños and the province of Laguna as premier science tourism and education destinations. The SyenSaya will be a venue where people from all walks of life will come to understand, appreciate, discover, and value the role of science in their everyday lives.

The Institute of Mathematical Sciences and Physics (IMSP) played host to three Balik Scientist awardees: Dr. Guillermo A. Mendoza, Dr. Vena Pearl A. Bongolan-Walsh and Dr. Romel D. Gomez.

Dr. Gil A. Mendoza , associate professor at the University of Illinois, will be in UPLB, specifically at IMSP, SESAM and CFNR, from June 23 to Aug. 31. He plans to give in-class lectures, seminars and short training courses on operations research, optimization and modeling of natural resource systems, geographic information systems and spatial analysis, community-based natural resource management systems, and landscape management systems for bio-fuels and bio-energy.

UPLB will soon have its first ever building with a solar panel and rain water collector system. The proposed Rural Economic Development and Renewable Energy Center (REDREC) of CEM will be a first of its kind in Laguna.

In a meeting with Chancellor Velasco on May 22, Dean Liborio Cabanilla of CEM, Dean Victor Ella of CEAT, Dean Candida Adalla of CA and Dr. Cecilio Arboleda of UPLBFI, Sen. Zubiri showed the perspective (see picture) of the building he plans to donate out of his PDAF. Together with an architect, Sen. Zubiri visited the ACCI building which will be renovated to give way to the two-storey REDREC building.

Speaking at the 36th UPLB Commencement Exercises, Albay Governor Joey Salceda exhorted the UPLB graduates to make a difference in the emerging field of climate change mitigation and adaptation, and in the renewed imperatives of rural development and agricultural resurgence. told graduates, “Your job is well cut out for all of you. Next only to the farmers, UPLB is the fulcrum of change in how conditions will evolve,” he told graduates.

The Office of the Chancellor, with the help of other units and offices, organized a send-off concert on April 25 for the graduating class of 2008. Entitled”Byaheng College-Bayan, Sakay Na!” with the theme Isakolar Para Sa Bayan, which Chancellor Luis Rey I. Velasco himself coined, the concert featured a colorful array of presentations that symbolized the UPLB students’ life, from the moment they receive their admission forms until the day they graduate.