SEAFDEC/AQD Southeast Asian Fisheries Development Center | Aquaculture Department
By Development Communication Section
Dr. Raul Suarez, a professor at the University of California – Sta. Barbara (USA) and a former AQD researcher, is mentoring AQD junior research staff (technical assistants) to help the Department develop a new generation of scientists. This activity is in line with AQD Chief Dr. Felix Ayson’s vision that AQD’s future scientists will come from its present crop of assistants who are mostly enrolled in graduate school.
Dr. Suarez will be spending his sabbatical leave (six months, starting February) at AQD’s Tigbauan Main Station in Iloilo, Philippines. The first of the series of meetings was held on 12 February where Dr. Suarez discussed research paradigm, paradigm shift, and applied research. The succeeding meetings (to be held twice a week) will feature a technical assistant who will present his/her study followed by a discussion or critiquing.
Ms. Schedar Rose Novilla, a technical assistant assigned at AQD’s farming systems & ecology section, is the first one to present her thesis entitled “Evaluation of bioremediation capability of sandfish Holothuria scabra” on 18 February. Ms. Novilla is taking up MS Fisheries (major in aquaculture) at the University of the Philippines Visayas and will defend her thesis in March.
