Help Pili get to UK! #PILIpinas

Hello! My name is CC Arias, a senior materials engineering student at the University of the Philippines Diliman. Together with Ryan Gabatino and Harveen Bongao, I am starting this campaign to help me support my first scientific publication.

Pili is an endemic plant from the Philippines. Aside from food production, recent studies on Pili involve extraction of essential oils. Sadly, its large portion of its waste left unused. Our study is interested in transforming this "sleeping" resource into a potent industry, particularly for cosmetic applications. Our vision is to set our country as a producer of cosmetic ingredients to boost our developing economy.

In the Philippines, research as a profession is something that most of my countrymen do not want to pursue. Due to lack of funding and technological challenges, our submission was actually delayed. Fortunately, ICKEM ( still accepted our entry. We are invited to present and publish our paper entitled "Synthesis and Characterization of Nanocellulose Derived from Waste Pili Pulps as a Potential Anti-Ageing Ingredient for Cosmetic Formulations" at St. Anthony's College, Oxford, United Kingdom from March 29 to April 1, 2019.

The next challenge we faced: pushing through the conference with all members present would be extravagant. First, the roundtrip airfare from Philippines to the UK would already cost us around 960 USD each. Second, the registration fee for all members would cost 1030 USD. Lastly, we are estimating our living cost which includes food and accommodation to accumulate to 500 USD each. Overall, these figures are impossible for mere undergraduate students to shoulder.

Since we are determined to publish our first paper, we have decided to send just one member as a compromise. I would really like to have my co-authors with me but all our efforts just to be accepted into the conference will be wasted if we are not able to present our study.

With this, we are humbly requesting for your support by sending any amount through this campaign. Your generosity would not only help us financially but also inspire young scientists from developing countries to pursue their passion in the search for scientific progress.

Here are the acceptance letter and abstract of our study.

Help Pili get to UK! #PILIpinas

For the love of country and science,

CC