Rice” Pedro B. Escuro National Scientist (1994), NAST Academician
Expertise: Agriculture, Genetics and Plant Breeding
Dr. Pedro Escuro has made significant contributions
to rice breeding, as plant breeder, professor, extension worker, and consultant in agricultural projects. He provided leadership in the development, isolation, and release of nine Seed Board rice varieties: Milpal 4, HBD-2, Azmil 26 and C-22 (upland) and C-18, C4-63, C4-137, C-168 and C-12 (lowland). Pedro dreamed of becoming an engineer during his early years of high school in Naga. However, he changed his mind after witnessing the horrors that were unleashed when World War II broke out and ravaged our lands and people. Since then, Pedro began to have further respect for what his own father did all these years and even regarded agriculture as a profession on the same level of prestige and importance that the rest of the world regarded engineering with. "The Father of Nuclear Medicine in the Philippines" • Radioisotope Laboratory • Medical Research Laboratory • The first Thyroid Clinic at the Philippine General Hospital • First Comprehensive Community Health Program in the country • Founder of Medical Center Manila and Emilio Aguinaldo College in Manila He developed an interest in nuclear medicine while at Johns Hopkins, and completed a training course on the field at Oak Ridge. Two years after his return to the Philippines in 1958, he was named as the head of the Department of Medicine of the University of the Philippines, and concurrently, the head of the department's Research Laboratories. As head of the Department of Medicine, Campos established the first Medical Research Laboratory in the Philippines at the U.P. College of Medicine. The facility, considered as the country's premier research laboratory in the 1960s[6], furthered research in fields such as epidemiology, physiology and biology He built the Coconut oil-fueled power generator to lessen the us of electricity and to lessen the damage caused by pollution. He developed the Biogas System to lessen air and water pollution too. “Father of Philippine Phycology” Dr. Velasquez pioneered the intensive study and collection of the Philippine blue-green algal species. He studied and investigated algal specimens in Oriental Mindoro, Eastern Palawan, Sulu, Batangas and Bataan such as the Euglenophyceae, Chlorophyceae, and Myxophyceae. He was able to produce 47 basic and 77 valuable scientific papers on the subject. Way back, he was a laboratory assistant in the Department of Botany, University of the Philippines until he became Professor in Botany in 1958. He was selected Emeritus Professor when he stop working in November 1967. Among his abundant honors are Distinguished Science Medal and Diploma of Honor from the Republic of the Philippines (1956), the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship (1956-57). He is also honored in the Men of Science, Division of Biological Sciences in1969, World's Who's Who in Sciences in 1970 and the Republic of the Philippines Cultural Heritage award in 1972. “The Father of Filipino Inventors” • Benjamin Almeda invented the coconut grater, which is used to grate coconut meat, to produce niyog, which is dried coconut meat used to garnish delicacies or coconut milk, which is used in many viands like laing. • He also invented the meat grinder, which is used to grind meat to produce finely minced meat which is also used in variety of dishes. • He also invented the rice grinder, which is a machine that grinds grains of rice into fine powder, also used in many Filipino delicacies. Benjamin Almeda’s inventions helped further and better the food industry, by making the food processing machines which helped many in the food industry to have an easier method of processing food, being fast and easy. Food processes that before took a long time, now was made easier and faster. Group 4