Summary
ECAIR closed its first full year of operations with the "ECAIR Year One" Year-End Presentation, held at the SEAMEO INNOTECH campus in December 2025. The Center was honored to host Department of Education Secretary Juan Edgardo "Sonny" M. Angara and other education leaders, who interacted directly with the AI systems ECAIR has built for the Department. Their engagement signaled a shift from viewing these tools as experimental pilots to recognizing them as part of DepEd's digital future. The presentation followed ECAIR's earlier showcase of STRIVE, SALIKSEEK, and TALINO at the DepEd Classroom Summit in the fourth quarter of 2025.
The Classroom Summit Showcase
At the DepEd-organized Classroom Summit, ECAIR presented a cohesive suite of AI systems to national stakeholders, demonstrating that its tools are deployed, functional, and ready to support the Department's immediate priorities. STRIVE (STRIDE Infrastructure Progress Visual Estimator) showed how computer vision can estimate classroom construction progress, offering a transparent way to monitor the Department's infrastructure backlog. TALINO (Tracking Adoption Locations and Infrastructure Network Operations) demonstrated how AI can facilitate donor-school matching for the Adopt-A-School Program, and SALIKSEEK (Specialized AI for Live Inquiries and Knowledge Seeking) showed how AI-driven search can democratize access to critical information. Together, the showcase made the case that data accessibility is as vital to education as physical infrastructure.
The Year-End Presentation with Secretary Angara
The Year-End Presentation brought together ECAIR's data scientists, AI engineers, and policy and learning-and-development leads with the Department's leadership. Secretary Angara was joined by Dr. Rafaelita Aldaba and SEAMEO INNOTECH Deputy Director Kochakorn Khattapan-Acidre, with ECAIR Managing Director and Chief AI and Data Officer Dr. Erika Fille Legara hosting. Guests moved through live demonstrations of the Center's systems, including STRIVE, seeing firsthand how ECAIR's work translates into tools DepEd offices can use.
A Milestone Worth Marking
The Year-End Presentation was more than a showcase. For a Center in its first year, hosting the Secretary and senior education leaders around working systems was a clear validation of ECAIR's trajectory, from foundation to scale, and of its mission to put artificial intelligence to work for the Filipino learner.