IT'S a first for a Dabawenyo student to win an award in the 59-year history of the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF), the largest pre-college scientific research event in the world.

Jovani Tomale, 16, traveled to Reno, Nevada in May to present a computer program that determines the sex of a Philippine eagle and took home the 2nd Special Award from the American Statistical Association (ASA).

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Tomale, now an accountancy freshman of the Ateneo de Davao University, formulated the computer software during his senior year at Davao City National High School with the supervision of Mr. Aristoniel Cabonilas, research consultant and statistician Mr. Vladimer Kobayashi of the University of the Philippines-Mindanao.

Identity crisis

"When we had a field trip to the Philippine Eagle Foundation (PEF)'s conservation breeding facility in Davao, I learned that they have a problem determining the sex of the Philippine eagles," explains Tomale.

Philippine eagles look alike physically whether male or female, making sex determination a challenge for researchers at the Philippine Eagle Center (PEC), the country's only captive breeding facility for the endangered Philippine eagle.

The center currently has two ways of knowing a Philippine eagle's sex. One is through expert's opinion. Through close monitoring of the eaglet, biologists determine the sex by matching data with the growth pattern of male or female Philippine eagles previously hatched at the PEC. This method, however, has failed PEF on a few occasions, in which some eagles that were born, after many years, would turn out to be of the opposite sex.

The second method requires patience, as biologists wait for the eagles to reach sexual maturity, which is at five years for female eagles and seven years for males. By then, the sex of the eagles is easily determined by observing breeding behavior: males mount, while females lift their tail feathers to allow copulation.

Test flight

Tomale successfully designed a computer program that systematically determines the sex of a Philippine eagle using the eagle's weight, height, age, etc. He used data from the PEF as basis for the program.

PEF Research Coordinator Jayson Ibañez said "data from eagles whose sex are already determined were entered into the software. The results were promising; it did not return a single incorrect finding."

However, Tomale's software is yet to be adopted by PEF and has not been tested on a newly hatched eaglet. Ibañez added that the PEF can build on Tomale's work and considers the program as a welcome addition to the PEF's variety of tools with which they can do conservation work.

Soaring high

Winning second place in the Philippine leg of the competition brought Tomale and eight others to Reno, Nevada. There, his software competed against the works of more than 1,500 exceptional high school students from more than 50 countries.

"To represent our country in the competition was more than enough for me, and the award from ASA is only a bonus," exclaims Tomale. He further adds, "I really hope this study helps the Philippine Eagle Foundation on increasing the dwindling number of Philippine eagles we have now."