THREE faculty members from the College of Science’s Department of Biological Sciences have been elected to the executive board of the Department of Science and Technology-National Research Council of the Philippines (DOST-NRCP), under the biological sciences division.
The biological sciences division is one of 13 areas in the NRCP, tasked with applying scientific expertise to address biological challenges through research and training across major fields of biology.
The three professors will serve two-year terms until 2027.
Asst. Prof. Mae Lowe Diesmos, coordinator of the college’s medical biology cluster, will serve as secretary.
She specializes in systematics, diseases, ecology, and the conservation of Philippine amphibians and reptiles. Diesmos is also a board member of the Biodiversity Conservation Society of the Philippines and the Wildlife Conservation Society of the Philippines, Inc.
Serving as the division’s section chair of microbiology is Prof. Donna May Papa.
Papa is the founder of the UST Beats (Bacteriophage Ecology, Aquaculture, Therapy and Systematics) Research Group, the pioneering team of phage researchers in the Philippines. She formerly served as president of the Philippine Society of Microbiology.
Prof. Grecebio Alejandro, director of UST’s Office for Graduate Research, was elected to serve as the plant biology section chair.
Alejandro has served as president of the Association of Systematic Biologists of the Philippines and the Alexander von Humboldt Association of the Philippines.
His work includes discovering new plant species, building databases for Philippine plants and their DNA barcodes, and founding the Thomasian group for plant evolution and identification research.
Established in 1933 through Republic Act 4120, the NRCP is an attached agency of the DOST. It is the country’s advisory body on basic research and national scientific development priorities.
