Two faculty members of the Faculty of Information and Communication Studies (FICS), University of the Philippines Open University (UPOU) have completed their Doctor of Philosophy degrees and have reported back for service this 2017 – Dr. Diego Silang Maranan and Dr. Ria Mae Borromeo.
Dr. Diego Silang Maranan obtained his Doctor of Philosophy in Art and Media as a Marie Curie Fellow at the Plymouth University, United Kingdom, under CogNovo.eu, an interdisciplinary project on creativity in cognition with a 4.1 million EU-funded project. His PhD thesis, “Haplos: Towards Technologies for and Applications for Somaesthetics,” was awarded first place at the Hack the Brain Hackathon in Amsterdam, the Netherlands in 2016, and received the DART17 Residency Award in Brussels/San Francisco worth 10,000 EUR this 2017.
A research and creative expert, Dr. Maranan has engaged in researches and creative works that has been published, presented, exhibited and performed both locally and abroad. One notable project he led at the UPOU in 2007 was the Biomodd, an art/science collaboration exploring how biological, technological, and social systems can integrate in a symbolic hybrid ecosystem, which was exhibited in Los Baños and Manila in the Philippines, and in Slovenia and New York, USA. Since his return to the university this year, he created the fourth of his Biomodd installation that was exhibited in Belgium.
In his return, he plans to integrate UPOU into the network of institutions around the world that are involved in creativity, cognition, cognitive innovation, and interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research. “I think these research competencies need to be developed to face the world’s challenges,” he said. He is slowly incorporating these competencies in the courses he teaches under the Bachelor of Arts in Multimedia Studies (BAMS) program, and envisions for UPOU to host an international conference on cognitive innovation in the next two years.
Dr. Ria Mae Borromeo is an expert in crowdsourcing, database engineering and information systems. Her Doctor of Philosophy degree in Engineering (Computing Science) was obtained from Keio University in Japan where she finished with the dissertation on “Process-based Quality Control Techniques in Crowdsourcing.” “I’m used to just dealing with machines. This is my first encounter with research involving people and it surprised me that I survived and learned so much from it,” she stated. Along with her dissertation, she has presented small research studies on ethics and deployment strategies in crowdsourcing.
Dr. Borromeo’s Master of Science degree in Engineering (Computing Science) is also from Keio University. Prior to studying in Japan, she graduated cum laude at the University of the Philippines Los Baños for her Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science.
Dr. Borromeo has been teaching with UPOU since 2012 as an Assistant Professor for courses under the Diploma in Computer Science and Master of Information Systems programs. In 2013, she was appointed as the Faculty Secretary of FICS. She has conducted several researches that has been presented and published locally and internationally. In 2012, she won the Silver Medal for Young Innovator Award at the 26th Annual Conference of the Asian Association of Open Universities in Chiba, Japan for her paper entitled “Automatic Content Filtering and Publishing by Email for the UP Open University Doctor of Communication Program Learning Management System.”
She and Dr. Maranan have been currently assigned to develop the curriculum for a Data Science program for UPOU which will specifically cater the needs of the Philippines in terms of data science and analytics. (ACLlamas)
