Holy Angel University beats DLSU

Congratulations to the Holy Angel University (HAU)!

Trivia: When I was taking exams for College, I only took the UPCAT (for the University of the Philippines) and HAU's College Entrance Exam. I passed in both; BA Psychology in UP Pampanga and Computer Engineering in HAU.

My preference of HAU among all other universities in Pampanga is not because of my mother being an alumna of HAU (Commerce), but because I, a computer geek back then, saw the school's promise in the realm of computer technology. Plus, I was able to read their college school paper; the articles generally were somewhat bolder than the content of others'. It was a symptom of the intellectual freedom of the studentry there, I thought.

However, I chose UP because I was at that time itching to try studying in places outside Pampanga and meet a student-sea of diversity. Plus, I wanted to enroll in a non-Catholic school to study religion objectively. HAU is a Catholic university while UP enjoys religious freedom.

While I only passed for UP Pampanga, after a year, I transferred to UP Diliman. Anyway, here's the news.

Holy Angel U tops national robot design tilt
By Dante M. Fabian

ANGELES CITY -- Three Electronics and Communications Engineering (ECE) students from the Holy Angel University (HAU) beat their counterparts from the De La Salle University (DLSU) and other schools in the recent Robotics Mini-Olympics held at DLSU.

An international panel of jurors adjudged the HAU entry as the best in the national competition sponsored by the Mechatronics and Robotics Society of the Philippines (MRSP) as part of the third International Conference on Humanoid Nanotechnology IT and Communications Environment Management (HNICEM).

The HAU delegates -- all graduating students from the College of Engineering and Architecture -- are Hernani Catacutan, Alvin Calma and Jerick Penano.

Engineer Arnold Santos, the trio's faculty adviser, revealed that it took them two months to design the winning entry, which was a pair of synchronized dancing robots. He said the students designed the robots, including the software that enables the robots to perform according to instruction.

Ioan Marinescu, director of the Precision Micro-Machining Center of the University of Toledo in the US, was said to have been very impressed with the ingenuity and energy of the HAU entry.

MRSP vice president Jimmy Itao commended HAU students. "Filipinos are learning fast in robotics," he said.

HAU is the biggest university in Central Luzon and one of 20 universities in the country granted autonomous status.