The Institute of Mathematical Sciences and Physics (IMSP) played host to three Balik Scientist awardees: Dr. Guillermo A. Mendoza, Dr. Vena Pearl A. Bongolan-Walsh and Dr. Romel D. Gomez.

Dr. Gil A. Mendoza , associate professor at the University of Illinois, will be in UPLB, specifically at IMSP, SESAM and CFNR, from June 23 to Aug. 31. He plans to give in-class lectures, seminars and short training courses on operations research, optimization and modeling of natural resource systems, geographic information systems and spatial analysis, community-based natural resource management systems, and landscape management systems for bio-fuels and bio-energy.

Dr. Mendoza will also speak in a forum on how models can be developed and used in addressing pressing issues in the Philippines. The forum will be a venue for discussions with faculty and student researchers on bio-energy and biofuels.

His visit has three goals: (a) to assist the host units in strengthening their scientific and academic capacities through seminar-workshops, short training courses and actual in-class teaching; (b) to assist and collaborate with local academic institutions in pursuing research and development activities that are of mutual interest to the host institutions while addressing local challenges and opportunities; and (c) to enhance the knowledge base and improve the technical capacity of local institutions in adopting new spatial and geographic information science and technologies.

Dr. Mendoza is an associate professor at the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences, University of Illinois in Urbana, Illinois. He obtained his PhD in Operations Research and Natural Resource Sciences at the University of Washington in 1980. He finished his BS and MS in Forestry at UPLB.

He is an expert in the areas of geographic information systems, natural resource management and environmental sciences, optimization techniques and spatial analysis and modeling. He is a much sought lecturer who has presented more than 50 times in various conferences and has received more than 20 grants from various institutions. He has written several chapters in books and co-edited one. More than 50 of his articles have been published in journals aside from those published in conference proceedings.

Dr. Pearl Bongolan-Walsh is an adjunct faculty member at the Ellis College of New York Institute of Technology. She will be staying from June 30 to July 29 to give lectures and seminars and conduct research discussions at IMSP and other UPLB units, UP-Diliman (mathematics and computer science), MSI, De La Salle University (mathematics and physics) and other science research institutes.

She will be conducting general discussions on gravity currents, stochastic term in boundary conditions that will cover the Wiener and Levy motions and their corresponding noises, a formal solution to diffusion equations with boundary noise and applications on drug-delivery to the brain, and visual transduction.

Dr. Bongolan-Walsh finished her PhD in Applied Mathematics at the Illinois Institute of Technology, MS in Mathematics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign as a Fulbright-Hays Scholar, and BS Applied Mathematics at UPLB, cum laude, as a scholar of the National Science Development Board.

Her areas of expertise are the applications of Navier-Stokes and scalar transport equations to geophysical fluids, biology, biomedical engineering; diffusions on a 2-manifold applied to biology; and the exit-time problem. She has written articles for the following journals: Discrete and Continuous Dynamical Systems Series B, Applied Mathematical Modelling, Communications in Nonlinear Science and Numerical Simulation, and IMA Volumes in Mathematics and its Applications.

Dr. Romel D. Gomez is a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Maryland, College Park.His research interests are in the areas of magnetism, nanotechnology and biochemical detection with emphasis on the phenomena and processes at the atomic and molecular length scales.

Dr. Gomez will stay in UPLB from Aug. 1 to 15, during which he will be conducting a short course in quantum physics. The course will provide rudimentary understanding of quantum principles in modern nanotechnology applications. Topics that he will discuss include wave phenomena, Schrodinger's equation, quantum states, barrier penetration, perturbation theory and several applications.

His work focuses on the fundamental understanding of devices that approach molecular dimensions. He has applied his knowledge to a variety of technological challenges ranging from magnetic imaging and spin transport in nanostructured materials to the development of high performance biosensors using carbon nanotube transistors.

He has served as General Chair of Intermag 2006 and Technical Committee of the IEEE Magnetics Society and had received several prominent awards including the 1998 George Corcoran Award for significant contributions to engineering education, National Science Foundation CAREER Award in 2000 and the Kent Junior Faculty Award of the Clark School of Engineering.

Dr. Gomez obtained his PhD in Condensed Matter Physics from the University of Maryland, MS degree from Wayne State University in Experimental Atomic Physics and BS degree from UP. He co-authored more than 60 scientific publications, including several book chapters and two US patents in nanotechnology and magnetism.