Complex Systems sem-starter

Filed under: News

The Complex Systems Group of the Instrumentation Physics Laboratory welcomed the new semester by conducting a team-building activity on 30 November 2012.

Dr. Longjas leaves for US Postdoc

Filed under: News 

Dr. Anthony Longjas, one of the senior members of the Complex Systems Group, leaves today, 30 October 2012 to accept a postdoctoral position in the United States.

Dr. Longjas will join the group of Prof. Efi Foufoula-Georgiou from the St. Anthony Falls Laboratory, University of Minnesota. As described in their website, the group is mainly interested in "stochastic modeling of surface hydrologic and geomorphologic processes."

More information about Dr. Longjas is available through his website.

IPL Complexity Science Group joins 30th SPP Congress

Filed under: News 

Several graduate and undergraduate student members of the IPL Complex Systems Group gave talks and joined the poster sessions, while senior members held key positions in the organizing committee during the 30th Samahang Pisika ng Pilipinas (SPP) Physics Congress.

Dr. Pastor joins APCTP

 Filed under: News

Dr. Marissa G. Pastor joins the Asia-Pacific Center for Theoretical Physics (APCTP) for a two-year postdoctoral contract starting this month.

Dr. Pastor is a senior member of the Complex Systems Group. She is one of the main researchers in experimental granular materials research. She also does work on modeling of passive transport of viral cargoes in cellular structures.

More information about Dr. Pastor can be found in her website.

Complex Systems Group Dinner, Sept. 22

Filed under News

To welcome the newest members, send off the postdocs, and meet with the visiting PhDs, the IPL Complex Systems Group had an informal dinner on September 22, 2012.

IPL Complex Systems. (l-r) Jazz Urog, Pio Calderon, James Pang, Erika Legara,
Felix Valenzuela, Chris Monterola, Johnrob Bantang, Issa Pastor, Gino Borja,
Abby Jayin, JP Maulion, Jen-Jen Manuel, and Haneka Lava.

The Group welcomes Jazz Urog and Pio Calderon as the newest members starting this semester. On the other hand, after this semester, Dr. Marissa Pastor and Dr. Anthony Longjas will leave the group to take their postdoctoral positions in Korea and the United States, respectively.

The dinner also coincided with visits from Dr. Chris Monterola and Dr. Erika Legara, now affiliated with the IHPC, A*STAR in Singapore.

IPL Progress Report Schedule

Filed under News

The Instrumentation Physics Laboratory will conduct its bi-annual Progress Report all Mondays of September.

The first batch of students to present on September 3, 2012 are the PhD and MS students.


PhD:
Christian Alis
Atchong Hilario
Jill Cabatbat
Gerold Pedemonte
Reniel Cabral
Antonino Paguirigan


MS:
Aivin Solatorio
Nicole Valdez
James Pang
Jen-Jen Manuel
Mar Philip Elaurza
John Paulo Maulion
Alva Presbitero

For September 10, 2012, the fifth year students will present:

BS5
Haneka Celine Lava
Maelori Krista Nambatac
Mary Angelie Alagao
Gino Borja
Aimee Rarugal
Kristine Faith Roque
Mabelle Salvador
Gabriel Dominik Sison
Gilian Uy
Maria Eloisa Ventura

Finally, on September 17, 2012, the fourth year members will present:

BS4
Meryl Regine Algodon
Adrian Chester Balingit
Katherine Anne Bulan
Aeriel Constantino
Phoebe Gallanosa
Wynn Dunn Gil Improso
Abigail Mae Jayin
Chris Eric Limos
Norman Mascarinas
Lugienor Lucille Roberto
Alix Jean Santos
Anjali Tarun

Speakers are given 5 minutes for the the presentation and a few minutes to answer questions from the audience.

Second call for papers for the 30th SPP Congress

Filed under News

You are cordially invited to participate in the 30th National Physics Congress of the Samahang Pisika ng Pilipinas (SPP, Physics Society of the Philippines) that will be held at De La Salle Health Sciences Institute on 22-24 October 2012.

Deadline of submission is 10 September 2012.

For more information about the 30th SPP National Physics Congress, please visit the congress website.

New members join IPL Complex Systems Group

Filed under News 

The IPL Complex Systems group welcomes Pio Calderon and Jazz Urog as the newest team members after passing the month-long IPL Application Process.

IPL Complex Systems Group meets with IRD of France

Filed under News 

 

To 'explore possible collaborations' with Complex Systems researchers in the Philippines on issues of global significance, the IPL Complex Systems Group arranged for a meeting on 23 July 2012 with researchers from the Institut de Rechercher pour le Developpement (IRD), whose Philippine visit is sponsored by the French Embassy.

In the official communique from the French Embassy, the IRD contingent is composed of the following researchers with the following backgrounds and research activities:

• Dr. Régine LEFAIT-ROBIN, IRD-Thailand country director, and South East Asia coordinator
• Dr. Jean-Pascal TORRETON, IRD-Vietnam country director
• Dr. Serge Stinckwich, whose research activity focuses on Modelling of complex systems with applications in epidemiology and health / Climate change and natural hazards / Ecosystems and natural resources / bioeconomic and social models.

The meeting, held at the National Institute of Physics, was also attended by the Dr. Jose Ma. Balmaceda, Dean of the College of Science, University of the Philippines Diliman, and Dr. Helen Yap from the Marine Science Institute, a proponent of the Complex System Modeling of Coral Reef and Shoreline Communities.

The Group, through its Head, Dr. Johnrob Bantang, presented the main research thrusts of its Complex Systems Research in the Philippines. The talk included short descriptions of important research works that have been published in international journals.

The IRD has four centers in the Southeast Asian region, namely, Vietnam, Thailand, Laos, and Indonesia. Their research works are focused on important global concerns, particularly global warming, emerging diseases, biodiversity, access to water, migration, poverty, world hunger.

More information about IRD from their website.

Call for papers: 30th SPP Congress

Filed under News

You are cordially invited to participate in the 30th Physics Congress of the Samahang Pisika ng Pilipinas (SPP, Physics Society of the Philippines) to be held at the De La Salle Health Sciences Institute on 22-24 October 2012.

The theme for this year's Congress is Exploring physics research in the health sciences.

The Congress will include plenary, invited and contributed papers and workshops. All submissions will undergo a peer-review process prior to acceptance.

Please visit congress2012.spp-online.org for more details.

DOST kicks-off National Science and Technology Week at SMX Convention Center

Complex Systems Group to join exhibits

Filed under News

The Department of Science and Technology (DOST) holds this year's National Science and Technology Week (NSTW) on 10-14 July 2012 at the SMX Convention Center in Pasay City, with the theme: Science, Technology and Innovation: Working Together for Growth and Development.

The NSTW will feature scientific events that include awarding ceremonies for outstanding Filipino scientists and scientific meetings of the members of the National Academy of Science and Technology (NAST). Exhibits, demos and forums for the public are also included in the lineup.

The Complex Systems Group of the Instrumentation Physics Laboratory will man exhibits explaining research works on complexity. The exhibits are for viewing during the entire week at the SMX Convention Center.

More information about the NSTW here.

Bulan attends Wolfram Science Summer School

Filed under News 

Katherine Bulan

Katherine Bulan, a fourth year undergraduate member of the Complex Systems Group, attends this year's Wolfram Science School from June 25-July 13, 2012 in Boston, Massachusetts.

Bulan is one of the 40 students invited to join the activities hosted by Wolfram Science, the company behind the scientific software Mathematica. Stephen Wolfram, the author of the book A New Kind of Science (NKS) and creator of Mathematica, is the host and overall Director of the school, heading a faculty of researchers and innovators from the industry and academia.

More about the school here.

The Global Lab: Interview with Dr. Legara on framing research

Filed under Research Features

An Interview with The Global Lab
 "News on Vitruvian Man on Ice, visualising the Eurozone crisis, Faster than Light Neutrinos and the European Conference on Complex Systems, and we speak to Erika Fille Legara about Media Framing in the Philippines." (Listen here)

The Global Lab is a podcast about cities, global connectivity and the impact of technology produced by the UCL Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (UCL-CASA). The UCL Beacon Bursary scheme generously provided start-up funds for recording equipment. - http://www.thegloballab.com/about/

Complexity & the Philippine Society

Erika Fille T. Legara, Ph.D.
(This article appeared as a two-part series in the STAR SCIENCE section of The Philippine Star)
Filed under General Interest

About the author: Erika Fille Legara, Ph.D. is currently doing a post-doctoral stint at the Institute of High Performance Computing under the Cross-Disciplinary Data-Intensive Analytics group in Singapore. She finished her Ph.D. in Physics at the National Institute of Physics in UP Diliman under the mentorship of UPD Chancellor Caesar Saloma and Assoc. Prof. Christopher Monterola. She graduated as the 2011 Most Outstanding Graduate Student of the UPD College of Science; at the same time, she was presented with the Edgardo Gomez Excellence in Dissertation Award. In June 2010, she was admitted to Santa Fe Institute’s highly competitive Complex Systems Summer School as a scholar. Prior to her post-doctoral stint, she was an assistant professor at the NIP-UPD. She may be contacted via her Gmail account etlegara.






“The 21st century will be the century of complexity.” – Stephen Hawking


In the aftermath of the recent season finale of the American Idol, a scientific paper by F. Ciulla et al. titled “Beating the news using Social Media: the case study of American Idol”, which was initially uploaded to arXiv, was circulated around the web and even featured in some of our local news websites. The paper presents methods to analyze sentiments and voting behaviors of individuals by assessing readily-available data from Twitter within the period of the TV show's season finale. The results are interesting as they were able to provide some forecast on the final outcome of the competition. More interesting, it seems, is the fact that all five (5) authors of the said paper are from the Department of Physics of Northeastern University in Boston. Yes, Physics. What do physicists have to do with sentiment and voting behavior analysis of individuals in a society?

IPL holds general meeting for 2012

Filed under News

To discuss issues and plan ahead for the coming semester, the Instrumentation Physics Laboratory (IPL), led by its coordinator, Dr. Maricor Soriano, conducted the first reorganizational meeting for the academic year on June 11, 2012.

Among the things discussed in the general meeting are recruitment and workshop schedules, the first sem being the recruitment season for the Lab. The process to hire new members will start on June 14 with a campaign for third year BS Physics and BS Applied Physics students, and will culminate in the deliberation by the IPL Staff by mid-August. Graduate students who have finished their core courses can also apply for IPL membership.

IPL, or Instru to its members, is still one of the biggest laboratories in terms of number of personnel despite recent departures from members for work and postdoc research. According to Dr. Soriano, the Lab is now composed of 8 Senior Staff and 38 student members. A workshop for the entire lab, something that has not been conducted in the last few years, is being planned to cap the recruitment activities and welcome new and old members alike.

More news from IPL can be found here.

Dr. Roxas-Villanueva joins UPLB Physics Faculty

Filed under News

Dr. Ranzivelle Marianne
Roxas-Villanueva

Dr. Ranzivelle Marianne Roxas-Villanueva, a long-time IPL and Complex Systems Group member, moves to the University of the Philippines Los Baños (UPLB) starting this academic year. She is joined by her husband, Dr. Anthony Villanueva, in going to the UPLB Institute of Mathematical Science and Physics (IMSP).

Dr. Roxas-Villanueva, who is one of the main researchers in the field of Physics Education, joined the Video and Image Processing Group during her undergraduate studies. After a teaching stint in her home province, she returns to the IPL under the Complex Systems and Synchronization Groups of Dr. Christopher Monterola and Dr. Giovanni Tapang, respectively, where she conducted experimental and theoretical work on a modified peer instruction method. Her interests also include semantic networks, social systems, and fractal pattern formations.

Dr. Bantang takes on group leadership

Filed under News 

Dr. Johnrob Bantang

Dr. Johnrob Bantang now heads the Complex Systems Group with the departure of Dr. Christopher Monterola for a Singaporean complexity team.

Dr. Bantang, also the Director of the University of the Philippines Computer Center (UPCC), will be joined by Dr. Anthony Longjas, Dr. Marissa Pastor, and Dr. Jesus Felix Valenzuela in mentoring the five graduate students and the six undergraduate students of the group.

One of the last few IPL researchers who have background both in optics (the original IPL research concentration) and complexity, Dr. Johnrob Bantang now specializes in a diverse set of topics. His interests include: Complex systems: granular matter mixing, segregation, and heap stability; cellular automata model of dynamical systems, chaotic systems, complex networks and social dynamics; ordinary differential equation model of virus-cell interaction; Membrane system simulation using Brane calculus formalism; Optics and imaging: focused light propagation and imaging through turbid media.

More information about Dr. Bantang from his NIP page.

Dr. Monterola heads Singapore complex systems team

Filed under News 

Dr. Christopher Monterola

Dr. Christopher Monterola, one of the leaders of the IPL Complex Systems Group, now heads the complex systems research work in Singapore. He joins the Institute of High Performance Computing, where Dr. Legara earlier started her work as scientist.

Dr. Monterola started to group together the researchers doing works on complexity in the late 2000s. Since his return from postdoctoral work until today, the group has become one of the most productive research groups in the NIP. Last year alone, six of the PhD students mentored by Dr. Monterola graduated, with one of them (Dr. Erika Fille Legara) receiving the Most Outstanding PhD Graduate award from the University of the Philippines. Dr. Monterola also received several distinctions, among them the NRCP Lifetime Achievement Award for Physics for his works on neural networks, granular materials, and social networks.

More information about Dr. Monterola from his website.

Dr. Batac joins MPIPKS

Filed under News

Dr. Rene Batac

Dr. Rene Batac is off to Germany May 4, 2012 for a postdoctoral research position at the Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems. His stint is for at least a year with a possible extension to two years.

In Dresden, he will be joining the group of Prof. Holger Kantz on Time Series Analysis. His previous works in the Philippines include granular material stability and experiments and models of avalanches.

More on Dr. Batac from his website.

Complex Systems Graduates Banner 2012 Batch

Filed under News

The graduating members of the Complex Systems Group of the Instrumentation Physics Laboratory (IPL) finish on top of the graduating class of the Academic Year 2011-2012.

James Christopher Pang

Jen-Jen Manuel

James Christopher Pang and Jen-Jen Manuel both finish magna cum laude in this year's graduation ceremonies. Both students are from the BS Applied Physics program of the National Institute of Physics (NIP).

In addition, Pang received the award for Best Undergraduate Thesis and the Dean's Medallion for Applied Physics.

Complex Systems Workshop 2012

Filed under News

The Complex Systems Group conducted its yearly Workshop on April 13, 2012 at the Loreland Farm Resort, Antipolo City.

Complex Systems. (L-R) Dr I.Pastor, J.Manuel (MS1), Dr R.Batac,
A.Jayin (BS4), B.Borja (BS5), A.Tarun (BS4), J.C.Pang (MS1),
Dr J.F.Valenzuela and A.Paguirigan Jr. (PhD2).
Not in the picture but joining the workshop are:
Dr C.Monterola, Dr E.F.Legara and Dr A.Longjas.

Present in the workshop are the PhD Staff, Drs. Monterola, Legara (visiting from Singapore), Pastor, Batac, Longjas, and Valenzuela. The student participants are A. Paguirigan (incoming PhD2), J. Manuel and J. Pang (incoming MS1), B.Borja (incoming BS5) and A.Jayin and A.Tarun (incoming BS4).

Dr. Legara leaves for SG postdoc

Filed under News

Dr. Erika Fille Legara

Dr. Erika Fille T. Legara, one of the senior members of
the Complex Systems Group, leaves January 22, 2012 for a postdoctoral work in one of Singapore's premier research institutions.

Dr. Legara, the Most Outstanding PhD Graduate of the College of Science for the year 2011, now works as Scientist in the Cross-disciplinary Data-intensive Analytics (CDA Group), Computing Science Department, Institute of High Performance Computing, Singapore.

One of the best in the group in terms of publications and international exposure, Dr. Legara is first among her batch mates to leave for postdoctoral work. She will be doing research on urban systems and other social aspects of complex systems.

Her PhD Dissertation is on the applications of ABM and network theory on socio-economic systems: multilevel marketing companies (recruitment process is reminiscent of pyramiding schemes), competing telecommunication companies, and news and media framing.

More on Dr. Legara from her website.






 

SEA-EU-NET: Dr. Monterola one of excellent SEA researchers

(first posted Jan. 2010)

Filed under Research Features

The Southeast Asia-European Union Network (SEA-EU-NET) selected Dr. Christopher P. Monterola of the IPL Complex Systems Group as one of the Excellent Researchers in Southeast Asia in the field of Physics. The mapping study was conducted with the objective of raising "awareness for the existence of high-quality research" and presenting "a pool of excellent researchers in Southeast Asia."

"In order to find the excellent researchers that can be of interest to the international science community, we [SEA-EU-NET] combined an internal and external approach, preparing the empirical ground for a qualitative and quantitative data collection and analysis."

Details of the selection process and the other featured researchers is in this booklet, published October 2009.

Vertical News feature: Competition in social structure

(first posted March 2009)

Filed under Research Features

The research paper of E.F.T. Legara, A.G. Longjas, and R.C. Batac is featured in VerticalNews, 17 March 2009.

http://www.verticalnews.com/premium_newsletters/Physics-Week/2009-03-17/62043PH.html

Featured paper: E.F. Legara, A. Longjas, R. Batac, Competition in a social structure, Int. J. Mod. Phys. C 20(1), 1-7 (2009). [DOI:  10.1142/S0129183109013406]

Vertical news feature: Avalanche statistics of granular slides

(first posted Jan. 2009)

Filed under Research Features

The work of D.E. Juanico, A.G. Longjas, R.C. Batac and C.P. Monterola is featured in Vertical News, 9 December 2008.

http://www.verticalnews.com/newsletters/Physics-Week/2008-12-09/61283PH.html

Featured paper: D.E. Juanico, A. Longjas, R. Batac, C. Monterola, Avalanche Statistics of Granular Driven slides in a miniature mound, Geophys. Res. Lett. 35, L19403 (2008). [DOI: 10.1029/2008GL035567]

C.S. Response Speech 2011

Erika Fille T. Legara, Ph.D.
(response in behalf of the College of Science Graduating class, first posted May 1, 2011)

Filed under General Interest

Wow. What a privilege it is to be standing in front of the brightest young minds of our society today! And that’s not even an exaggeration; a bit vain, yes, but not an exaggeration.

Promoting our research works

Rene Batac
(first posted Mar 24, 2010)

Filed under General Interest

This is the first of the (hopefully) continuous series of general interest articles from members of the group. In this feature, let me describe how I envision this regular feature of our website to be.