EEEI holds 1st NEECECon

Originally posted in UPDate Online.

Anna Regidor – Diliman Information Office
July 22, 2024

The first National Electrical, Electronics, and Computer Engineering Conference (NEECECon) was met with overwhelming response, with over 300 participants from the industry, government, and academic institutions attending the two-day conference from July 18 to 19 at the Novotel Manila Araneta City.

Organized by the UP Diliman Electrical and Electronics Engineering Institute (EEEI), NEECECon’s theme this year is National Development Through Sustainable Industrialization.

According to EEEI Director Lew Andrew Tria the conference is an avenue for the EEEI to show the latest research being done in the institute that has “direct impact on society and the country.”

Tria hopes to make NEECECon a regular event to “to show that we can work all together—academe, industry, and government—towards nation building.”

The conference featured about a hundred individual research projects grouped into nine technical sessions and two poster sessions from EEEI students, faculty, other UP System constituent units, government agencies, and industry partners.

Some of the poster presentations. Photo by Jerald DJ. Caranza, UPDIO

The research projects and themes of the technical sessions were grouped into artificial intelligence and smart cities; power and energy; environmental monitoring; electric vehicles and energy storage; connectivity; industry talks; and health.

The projects focused on safer alternatives to lead-based batteries, developing a cost-effective ways to screen newborns for hearing deficiencies, and efforts to convert small fishing boat motors from a fossil fuel-based system to an electric one, among others.

Five keynote speeches were delivered throughout the conference featuring government and industry experts. Among the keynote speakers were Miles Thaddeus Ramirez of Analog Devices Inc. (ADI) Philippines and Prospero C. Naval Jr., PhD of the UPD Department of Computer Science.

Ramirez. Photo by Jerald DJ. Caranza, UPDIO

Ramirez described ADI’s journey of growth from assembling semiconductor devices to designing their own original ones.

Meanwhile, Naval delved into the practical hurdles and realities of establishing a technology startup business, using his experience in developing Fish-I, a semi-automated fish census system capable of monitoring fish populations using unmanned underwater camera rigs.

Naval. Photo by Jerald DJ. Caranza, UPDIO

In a related development, UPD, through the EEEI, signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Embedded Silicon Technology Solutions Corporation on July 19. The MOU was to formalize and continue the mutual support and collaboration between the two institutions.

NEECECon 2024 was conducted along and in partnership with the Advanced Science, Technology, and Innovation Convention 2024 (ASTICon 2024), a convention conducted by the Department of Science and Technology – Advanced Science and Technology Institute (DOST-ASTI). The ASTICon 2024, with the theme Together, We Can, showcased the latest research projects being done at UPD and DOST-ASTI.

Booth for Resilient Education Information Infrastructure for the New Normal, one of the projects under the DOST-ASTI. Photo by Jerald DJ. Caranza, UPDIO

(SSL projects were part of the exhibits and presentations)