31/05/2021
𝐔𝐒𝐓𝐏 𝐡𝐨𝐬𝐭𝐬 𝐈𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐧𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐟𝐚𝐛 𝐟𝐢𝐫𝐬𝐭-𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐞;
𝘌𝘷𝘢𝘭𝘶𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘶𝘭𝘵𝘴 𝘮𝘢𝘳𝘬 𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘭𝘮𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘧𝘦𝘦𝘥𝘣𝘢𝘤𝘬
by Ismael N. Talili
The University of Science and Technology of Southern Philippines (USTP) successfully hosted the First International Conference on Research, Innovation, and Investment (ICRII) which was staged on May 18-20, 2021 on a hybrid production system using an online conference cloud platform.
Over 300 registered participants attended the three-day conference including paper presenters, observers, and startups apart from scientific lecturers and expert research and innovation speakers of which most of them hail from Germany, Australia, Japan, Malaysia, Taiwan, Pakistan, India, China, Kenya, Poland, to name a few.
Some remarkable, well-thought-out highlights underpinned the conference such as pre-conference scientific lectures, keynote, and plenary speeches, breakout presentations of research papers, world café for network platform, and startup pitching that make the conference extraordinary compared with other international conferences.
No less than His Excellency Rodrigo R. Duterte graced the Opening Ceremonies. In his speech, Duterte congratulated USTP for organizing the conference and articulated his presidential declaration of commitment to support research and development in the academe and innovation ecosystem.
During the Innovation and Investment Forum, Hon. Juan Miguel F. Zubiri, Philippine senator, gave credence to trailblazing an investment culture in his keynote speech while Paolo Benigno A. Aquino IV, former Philippine senator and author of Innovative Startup Act, articulated investments in innovation and entrepreneurship.
Three major conference awards were accorded during the Awards Ceremony. These are Best Paper, Best Presenter and Most Number of Delegates (institutional Level).
Scholarly papers will be selected and published free of charge in Mindanao Journal of Science and Technology (MJST), a scientific journal published bi-annually by USTP and indexed by Scopus and Clarivate Analytics.
The conference is an annual gathering of researchers, innovators, investors, policy-makers and other thought leaders to discuss innovative ideas, current and emerging trends, best practices, and other developments in a particular field and pursue a progressive research and innovation ecosystem.
ICRII featured various advances in research and innovation across disciplines. It provided the participants an avenue to discuss and present results of a scientific inquiry, find opportunity to utilize and commercialize research outputs, draw local and international investors of research-based business potentials, and establish research collaboration and linkage relation with institutions or agencies across the globe.
Furthermore, ICRII featured scientific lectures on new, relevant topics as well as innovation and Investment Forum wherein startups pitched their own innovation to potential investors. The forum aimed to provide the stakeholders an avenue to exchange ideas and discuss the possibility to further develop startup ideas and make them utilizable and commercializable in either early-stage or fertile ecosystem.
From the results of the conference evaluation, majority of the participants were generally impressed on the way the virtual conference was conducted; gained take-aways from the expert speakers; and would highly recommend the next conference to friends and colleagues in the academe, research and innovation communities.
