Home institution: Central Luzon State University, Philippines

Host institution: Cornell University-Ithaca Campus

Award name: Award of Senior Scholarship Grant (Advanced Research and University Lecturing Scholarship Program)

Discipline: Agriculture

Award year: 2022

Dr. Sace is a Professor at the Department of Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering, College of Engineering, Central Luzon State University, where he also completed his BS, MS and Ph.D. in Agricultural Engineering. His dissertation was focused on automating water management of hydroponic production of honeydew melon while his masteral thesis was about automation of pressurized irrigation systems using soil moisture as triggering mechanism. He completed the Fulbright-Philippine Agriculture Scholarship Program in 2012 at the University of Arizona, with a pioneering study on the integration of freshwater prawn in aquaponics system. He became deeply involved in promoting smart agriculture and supervised several government-funded projects that led to the establishment of the CLSU Hydroponics and Aquaponics Technologies Demonstration Farm. He was later designated as Director of the proposed Urban Farming Innovation and Learning Center which is being established at the Quezon City University upon the request of the Secretary of the Department of Agriculture. He loves to design and fabricate tropicalized greenhouses and production models for hydroponics and aquaponics systems.