The Institute of Mathematical Sciences and Physics (IMSP), in partnership with the Filipino Science Hub (FilSciHub), held a research webinar last March 28, 2022, which was one of IMSP’s three main virtual events as the institute celebrates its 39th National Center of Excellence (NCOE) Founding Anniversary in March-April 2022. The year’s theme was “Fostering Academe-Industry Partnership Towards Innovation and Competitiveness.”
The research webinar’s morning event was hosted by the Mathematics Division, while the webinar’s afternoon session was organized by the Physics Division. The main participants of the webinar were high school students and educators from different high schools all over the Philippines. The purpose of the whole-day research webinar was to promote and showcase the institute’s degree programs, research clusters, and other fascinating research in the fields of Mathematics, Applied Mathematics, Physics, and Applied Physics. The whole-day virtual event was also streamed live on the IMSP’s official Facebook page as well as the FilSci Hub’s official page.
Dr. Editha C. Jose, the director of IMSP, formally started the program by giving her warmest welcome to all the invited high school students, educators, special guests, and all the other participants who gave their time to participate in the research webinar. She emphasized that through research, instruction, and extension, the whole institute pursued its goal in advancing science and technology in the country, and strengthening and broadening the national capability to train scientific leaders and conduct research in the basic sciences. Dr. Jose also added, “Our institution’s initiatives in research, instruction, and extension are all geared towards our vision as a world-class academic and research center in mathematics and physics.”
The successive presentations of the eight research clusters from the Mathematics Division were given by the Analysis cluster, the Financial Mathematics and Actuarial Science (FMAS) cluster, the Mathematics Education (MathEd) cluster, Coding Theory and Cryptography (CTC), Graph Theory and Combinatorics (GTC), Numerics & Approximations (NuMath), BioMathematics (BioMath), and the Quantitative Management and Decision Science (QMDS) cluster. There were also three popular talks given by the three different resource speakers from the division. The first speaker was Dr. Clarisson Canlubo who presented his popular talk entitled, “What are symmetries?” His talk highlighted the important applications of symmetry and its particular meaning in both science and mathematics. Asst. Prof. Destiny S. Lutero also gave her popular talk on maximizing travel goals through mathematics. Her presentation was a product of the published journal article that she co-authored, which was entitled, “Optimal route planning for day tours in Marinduque, Philippines.” The talk focused on how to maximize the number of visited tourist spots (in Marinduque) given time and site-preference constraints using an integer programming model. The last popular talk was given by Dr. Jomar Rabajante, the current dean of the UPLB Graduate School. He gave his presentation on biomathematics modeling and discussed the various models and initiatives regarding the use of analysis and modeling in epidemiology. An open forum was conducted after each set of research cluster presentations and popular talks.
The afternoon session of the NCOE Webinar features the Physics and Math-Science Teaching programs and research clusters. Popular talks were delivered by Dr. Allan Alinea entitled “History of the Universe”, Assoc. Prof. Nelio Altoveros on the SARAI and IoT research projects, and Dr. Anthony Allan Villanueva on “Wave Property of Matter. Research clusters: (1) Astrophysics, Particle Physics, and Nuclear Physics, (2) Materials Phys and Engineering, (3) Optics and Instrumentation, (4) Quantum Information & Foundations of Quantum Mechanics, (5) MST Research Group (6) Condensed Matter & Statistical Physics, and (7) Analytics, Complex, and Environmental Systems introduced their research works thru popular video presentations. During the open forum, speakers and resource persons answered queries from the audience composed mainly of undergraduate and high school students. The speakers also offered advice to the students on their studies and encourage them to pursue Physics and Math-Science Education degrees in the future.
With over 100 participants and 300 livestream viewers in the research webinar, the morning session was formally concluded by Dr. Eduardo O. Jatulan, the head of the organizing committee of the Mathematics Division. He expressed his deepest appreciation to all the participants, as well as all the research clusters, speakers, and panelists for their valuable contributions to the webinar. “If you want to enhance your skills in qualitative reasoning, logical arguments, analytical and critical thinking, and problem-solving, our [degree] programs, if not good, are the best fit for you”, he added.
— LA Sajulga & FIN De Vera
