Flying high with Luigi Iboleon Dy

The country does not run short of Filipino students with exemplary performances in universities abroad. At Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, a son of a topnotch cardiologist and businessman is set to make a mark with his research on worldwide aviation.

- BUM D. TENORIO, JR.

Purdue, online sources say, is famous for high-tech research work and international programs.

In December, Luigi Iboleon Dy, 25, will graduate with an expected perfect GPA of 4.0 at Purdue University for his PhD in Technology, with concentration in Aviation Technology. His dissertation "Assessing the Effectiveness of Simplified Runway Status Lights" in airports is set to democratize the high cost of maintaining the safety of aviation around the globe.

Luigi is the only child of businessman Edison Dy and Dr. Leni Iboleon-Dy. They are responsible for their son's fascination with flight. Leni bought her son more than a hundred die-cast airplanes when he was a child and with every toy plane, Luigi toyed with the idea of becoming a pilot. Edison, on the other hand, gifted Luigi with a Microsoft flight simulator when he was in grade school and Luigi learned "to fly airplanes" with his computer. With his loving parents as conduits to his dream, Luigi became a licensed pilot while in high school at Xavier School.

"For my dissertation, I'm working on what I call the simple, affordable, flexible, and expandable runway status light system in the airport. The idea is a traffic light for runways. A really more appropriate analogy is a railroad crossing signal. The idea is that when a plane is coming, you'll have an indication. A system like this exists but it's very expensive, because it uses different sensors and radars," he begins.

Luigi adds, "In the US, around 20 airports have this (runway status light system). Each system costs approximately $20 million. The underlying information system is usually used for providing air traffic controllers with information where airplanes are; with that, you can trigger runway status lights. The existing runway status light system works very well but it is very expensive. Because it's very expensive, most airports can't have it."