While the UP Diliman professor doesn't describe himself as a space scientist, his career has been spent looking at ways on how the country can contribute to space data and exploration.

Dr. Joel Joseph S. Marciano Jr., acting director of the Advanced Science and Technology Institute of the Department of Science and Technology (DOST-ASTI), was around 12 years old when the Philippines began to invest in space technology. Little did he know that a big part of his career would be dedicated to that area of science.

At the time, the young intellectual was weaving himself through his varied interests: literature, writing, public speaking, physics, math, and science.

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His late father, an electrical engineer and entrepreneur, was a big influence in his life. And when it was time to fill out his college application at the University of the Philippines Diliman, he picked two courses: Electrical Engineering and Political Science. He got accepted in the former—which only had 60 slots—and took that as a sign he was meant to be an engineer.

Decades later, that sign was again warranted—but in a very bug way. In January 2020, the UP Diliman professor of electrical and electronics engineering was appointed by President Rodrigo Duterte as the head of the Philippine Space Agency (PhilSA).

A young mind’s curiosity

The second of four siblings, Dr. Marciano grew up exposed to the world of telecommunications, which was his father’s business. He was surrounded by his father’s magazines: Newsweek, Asiaweek, National Geographic, and he started keeping himself abreast with what's happening in the world as early as grade school.

In high school, at San Beda College Alabang, Muntinlupa, his teachers would ask him to help them check his classmates’ papers. “I may not have been the best, but I enjoyed it,” he tells ANCX. Soon, he was joining math competitions. He never won. “The Philippine High School students were always better,” he says in his straightforward and unruffled manner of speaking. “But it was good exposure.”

The University Laboratory for Small Satellites and Space Engineering Systems Building 1, an interdisciplinary facility that serves as a hub for space technology in the Philippines, was inaugurated last August.

In his crisp long-sleeved shirt, pressed beige trousers, and brown leather shoes, the 47-year-old professor looks every bit the picture of authority when he talks to us inside Diliman's University Laboratory for Small Satellites and Space Engineering Systems Building 1 (ULyS3ES -1). It’s an interdisciplinary facility that serves as a hub for space technology in the Philippines. The equipment it houses include a chamber that mimics the environment in space, booths for small satellite assembly, etc. Exactly the kind of environment that excites Dr. Marciano.

It’s the “technical challenge” that attracted him to physics and math in the first place. He remembers the fascination he felt the first time he was acquainted with calculus. “People were saying, ‘What good is this in life?’” he says. “I already knew then that I could use that to solve a problem.”

It was also in high school when he was introduced to a “very good teacher,” whom he describes as someone “like a drill sergeant in English.” He was inspired. The teacher allowed him to discover his talent in public speaking, “I was always nervous going in front of a crowd, but once you get going, once you know what to say, the words will just flow.”

Up until the end of high school, he was torn between two different worlds. “I could be a lawyer, I could be an engineer,” he once thought. In 1994, he managed to finish his five-year course on time. The next step, or what he calls, “the default plan,” was to work for his father. But his role model wanted him to explore what else he could do with his talent outside of their company.

After graduation, the young Marciano's professors offered him a teaching job, which required him to have a master’s degree. “There were other job offers outside the academe, some more compelling than others, more financially rewarding,” he says. “But I felt that I had a lot more to learn. I felt that I could still challenge myself more in that environment.” He had good teachers, too, who showed him how engineering was supposed to be taught—and he wanted to be like these mentors.

Two years into his master’s degree, when he was about to write his thesis, the dean called Dr. Marciano into his office. As soon as he arrived, he was baffled to see an Australian man waiting for him. He found out he was chosen as a recipient of a government scholarship to study at the New South Wales University for his Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in electrical engineering and telecommunications. Four months after that meeting, without finishing his master’s degree, he was on a plane to Sydney, Australia. He earned his PhD in 2000.

The space laboratory

Back when Dr. Marciano was a new instructor at UP Diliman, the engineering department challenged him to build a laboratory. They gave him a small room, a few chairs and tables, old equipment, and two students. The lab focused on wireless telecommunications and radiofrequency electronics.

Before he left the Philippines, one of his two student advisees took over the lab. When he came back, the lab was in much better shape that when he left it. It was around that time, too, when cellphones, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth were emerging technology, and people were giving more attention to disaster response. Dr. Maciano’s team found opportunity in these trends.

He explains, “When we respond to these disasters, we rely on information and data, and among these are satellite images.” So they started studying satellites, in relation to telecommunications. He emphasizes that what they are doing is not so much space exploration as it is a segment of space technology.

The Full Anechoic Chamber is housed inside ULyS3ES Building 2. It measures antenna radiation patterns, which can help measure an antenna’s ability to provide wireless range and coverage.

Soon, the laboratory was approached by various potential collaborators, including Japanese universities, who offered young Filipinos an opportunity to earn a degree, and/or be part of projects that build platforms, such as the small satellites, which gather data.

With this exponential rise in space technology, Dr. Marciano and his team wrote proposals to get more funding for their laboratory. “In the beginning, we had a lot to learn,” he says. “I’m not a space scientist. But the things we were building in the lab were very relevant because satellites need to communicate. They need radios. They need electronics.” It became clear that they needed a home for space technology. “We asked ourselves, ‘When the scholars from Japan come back, where do they come back to?’”

ULyS3ES

The design of ULyS3ES – 1, which used to be an open space in front of the Electrical and Electronics Engineering Institute in UP Diliman, was influenced by Dr. Marciano’s experience while studying abroad. It has an open-corridor layout, with modern industrial interior design, enclosed in a glass façade.

For his postdoctoral training at the University of California, Berkeley, the professor was in an environment that he describes as “very conducive for productive research.” He recalls, “Our lab had electrical engineers, but there were art around us. We need the same inspirational environment as most people do. I realized that some of the things they do abroad are immediately doable in the Philippines, some may take time.”

The bigger dreams for the team may soon be a reality. On August 8, 2019, the “Philippine Space Act” was signed into a law, creating the PhilSA, the central government agency that oversees and answers all concerns related to space technology and space science in the Philippines.

In fact, the construction of ULyS3ES-1 began as early as 2017, with funding from the DOST Grants-in-Aid (DOST-GIA) for a program launched in 2015, called the “Development of Philippine Scientific Earth Observation Microsatellite (PHL-Microsat).” The program ended in 2019, and is succeeded by the “Space Technology and Applications Mastery, Innovation and Advancement (STAMINA4Space),” program, which is implemented by DOST-ASTI, headed by Dr. Marciano.

Dr. Marciano’s greatest influence was his late father, who was an engineer. His mother had taught grade school math before she became a housewife.

With the PhilSA up and running, the Philippines is now taking a bigger part in the area of space technology. There are already ground stations that communicate with satellites that download data from space. There are teams that collect these data, process them, and turn them into actionable information that are relevant to disaster risk management, agriculture, fisheries, maritime awareness, etc.

“We need to translate the investments we’ve had in science and technology into something that will fortify the services offered by the government, and will help our local industries become more competitive,” says Dr. Marciano. “Elon Musk is building 1,000 satellites. Do we have any place in that? Can we supply components that we build here? We have this segment in the industry that can and should participate in those endeavors.”

Dr. Marciano’s appointment as head of PhilSA has yet to be confirmed by the Commission on Appointments. But even without that distinction, with the work he and his team have done, they have already made the Philippines a respectable player in the arena of space technology.

Photographs by Chris Clemente