DOST Funds WIT P6.8M Research Project
The Creative Industry is considered as one of the fastest growing sectors in the global economy. On the recent consultation with stakeholders, representatives from the Creative industries emphasized that most of the challenges encountered by their sectors can be addressed by research and development.
With the Philippines known to export locally produced goods to other countries, the council of Department of Science and Technology – Philippine Council for Industry, Energy and Emerging Technology Research and Development (DOST-PCIEERD) is offering funding opportunities to innovators and researchers to come up with innovative technologies and solutions that will aid or enhance in the “mano-mano” or semi-mechanized production of the Creative Industries sectors. This opportunity was one of their many sectors of DOST-PCIEERD Call for Proposals 2023 which opened its submission of proposals from May 3, 2021 to June 3, 2021.

With this prestigious opportunity, the Center of Research and Development (CRD) of Western Institute of Technology (WIT) has again accepted another challenge of DOST-PCIEERD and proposed a project titled “SandPix: A Sand based Image Printing Technology“. This proposed project aims to develop a printer that prints out images using varying shades of sand instead of inks. This machine allows the mass production of artworks in which its images will have random shade and irregular texture of mixed natural sand when viewed closely but becomes more photographic when viewed from afar. The proponent of this proposal, Mr. Ryan A. Subong, the Director of WIT CRD, has already produced the few samples of this artwork manually and have shown it to the evaluators of DOST to convince them during his pitch presentation.

This proposal is a multi-disciplinary project which collaborates with the ICT Department of West Visayas State University (WVSU) – Janiuay for the formulation of its sand mixing algorithm, and the various programs of WIT, namely the Computer Engineering Department for the programming the interface and the behavior of the system, the Electrical Engineering Department for designing and fabricating the electrical systems, the Mechanical Engineering Department for designing and constructing the mechanical systems, and lastly the College of the Business Administration to manage the marketing and commercialization of the system.
After several sessions with the various panelists of DOST-PCIEERD explaining and defending the artistic, commercial, and technical aspects of the proposed system, DOST has finally approved the the proposal and granted WIT a budget of Php 6,833,239.29 for a duration of 30-months of research and development. Though the project is scheduled to start at year 2023, DOST has informed that the CRD could launch the project earlier by year 2022 if the WIT has finalized its prior DOST-funded project by that year and the budget for the new project becomes available.