Dr. Daniel Leslie S. Tan, a senior researcher of the Philippine Root Crop Research and Training Center (PhilRootcrops) was one of the nine winners during the 2008 Regional R and D competitions conducted by cluster by the Philippine Council for Industry and Energy Research and Development (PCIERD).

The three clusters were: Luzon, Visayas-Mindanao and National Capital Region. Each cluster has 3 winners. The first prize winner gets one hundred twenty-five thousand pesos (P125,000.00); the second prize winner gets one hundred thousand pesos (P100,000.00), and the third prize winner gets seventy-five thousand pesos (P75,000.00)

According to PCIERD, there were 110 entries in the competition but only 24 qualified for presentation during the 7th PCIERD S&T Fora and Competition. Regional winners were endorsed to vie for the national level competition during the 26th anniversary of PCIERD held on March 14, 2008 at the Dusit Hotel Nikko.

Dr. Tan's paper entitled Technical Improvement of the Dried Cassava Grates Processing System bagged the second prize in the Visayas-Mindanao Cluster Competition. The first prize was the paper of Dr. Dulce M. Flores of UP-Mindanao and the third prize won the paper of Dr. Danilo T. Jaque of Hydronet Consultants, Inc. (Luzvisminda A. Ternura/PhilRootcrops)