Structure and Dynamics Group

Joanne obtained her Bachelor's degree in Applied Physics, graduating magna cum laude in 2020. She was supported by a DOST-SEI Junior Level Science Scholarship. Her research involved studying different characteristics of classical and quantum reversible circuits and implementation of quantum algorithms. She obtained a Master's degree in Meteorology in 2022 as an MS Graduate Fellow of DOST-PAGASA, where she now uses numerical models for weather forecasting.

Anthony obtained his BS Physics degree in 2009. After graduating from UP Diliman, he attended the University of Southampton where he completed the Master of Science program in Sound and Vibration Studies last 2011. He then moved to Toronto where he works as an analyst for a Canadian consulting firm that specializes in providing sound solutions for land use planning, architectural applications, and other acoustical problems.

Danna finished the BS Applied Physics (Materials Physics) program magna cum laude in 2018 and was supported by a DOST-SEI Merit Scholarship. Danna's research involved developing methods to study the elastic and piezoelectric properties of hexagonal crystals with the Quantum ESPRESSO software package. Danna later pursued graduate studies in numerical weather and climate modeling, obtaining an MS degree in Meteorology from the UPD Institute of Environmental Science and Meteorology in 2021. Danna is now a science research specialist at the Philippine Space Agency.

Clei completed her Bachelor's degree in Applied Physics in 2018 and Master's degree in Physics in 2020. She worked on molecular dynamics simulations of bulk metallic glasses for a year before turning her attention to the study of quantum spin chains. Her research involved calculating several entanglement measures on a Kitaev chain with long-range interactions and analyzing its quantum critical behavior. She obtained her MS Physics degree from the NIP in 2020 with support from the DOST-ASTHRD Program. She is currently a data analyst for a management consultancy company.

Ben earned his BS Physics degree in 2018, with his research on disordered XY spin chains being cited as a Leticia Shahani Awardee for Best BS Physics Undergraduate Thesis. He studied the effect of a random transverse field on the correlation functions of the XY model. He entered the UP College of Medicine soon after and obtained his medical MD degree in 2024. 

Francis completed his MS Physics degree in 2015 as a DOST-ASTHRDP scholar. His MS research work has been presented in conferences in Kyoto and Stellenbosch as part of the OVCRD-funded Project No. 141420 PhDIA. He was a faculty member at the UPLB Institute of Mathematical Sciences and Physics for two years before attending the University of Queensland where he obtained his PhD degree in 2021. He is now a postdoctoral researcher at the Marian Smoluchowski Institute of Physics of the Jagiellonian University in Kraków.

Karla obtained her MS Physics degree in 2007 with the support of a PCASTRD-DOST graduate scholarship. She used molecular dynamics simulations to model reacting chemical species for her MS thesis. She has been an instructor for the College of Science and Mathematics (CSM) of Western Mindanao State University (WMSU) in Zamboanga City since 1998. Karla is among the first advanced physics degree holders of the CSM faculty and has actively worked for the CHEd accreditation of WMSU's physics programs. She is now pursuing a PhD degree in Physics at the University of San Carlos.

Mark completed the BS Applied Physics program with concentration in Materials Physics and graduated magna cum laude in 2024. He was supported by a DOST-SEI RA 7687 Scholarship and the Oblation Scholarship program. While in SanD, he studied the optical and electronic properties of corundum using first-principles simulations. His research is part of an effort to model the optical properties of gemstones. 

Jairus graduated with a BS Applied Physics degree in early 2021. His undergraduate thesis was on the thermoelectric effect and he studied how the amount of heat in a solid changes with applied electric fields and the intrinsic properties of the material. Jairus has since worked as a full-stack software engineer working on web, data engineering, and blockchain applications. He was active in the local music scene through the UP Music Circle and his band Granny Lee, and continues his involvement by helping to produce shows and events.

Micielle defended her MS thesis on Monte Carlo studies of critical percolating systems last 2012. During her MS studies she tutored students in science and mathematics and later also worked for a quality management company as an ISO consultant. Shortly after receiving her MS degree, Micielle was appointed as a university RA for SanD and held that position until 2013. She currently resides in Winnipeg where she is pursuing a career in physics education.

Marc completed his Bachelor's degree in Applied Physics last 2020. As the SanD systems administrator, he was responsible for managing the group's computing cluster. In 2019 he interned at the Philippine Genome Center Core and developed an interest in bioinformatics. For his undergraduate thesis he investigated the application of graph convolutional networks for predicting potential therapeutic protein targets in a biological network. He worked briefly at the Philippine Genome Center Biosurveillance Team analyzing SARS-CoV-2 samples before joining the Asian Institute of Management's MS Data Science program.

Richmond completed the BS Applied Physics program in 2020. His student research work was on numerical simulations of random walks in the presence of drift forces. He now applies his computing and programming skills to analyze logistical data for an e-commerce company.

April finished the BS Applied Physics program in 2008 and the MS Physics program in 2016. She has worked for an IT services provider and trained in IBM business server programming and operations, handling RPG development tasks on financial systems. She was later hired by an e-commerce company as a JDE developer and, later, supervisor for their back-end operations. She also has an interest in trading and portfolio and risk management. April is currently an instructor at the New Era University.

Alyana obtained her Bachelor of Science in Applied Physics degree in 2023. Her thesis showcased a similarity search technique called locality-sensitive hashing for classifying article abstracts and titles from the arXiv repository. She now serves a universal banking institution as a data analytics officer for business transformation and development, where she applies her skills to drive data-driven strategies and business growth.

Kryzz graduated from the BS Applied Physics program in 2019 with the support of a DOST-SEI RA 7687 Undergraduate S&T Scholarship. His undergraduate thesis focused on parallelization of the density matrix renormalization group with the matrix product state ansatz. He is pursuing a career in data science and is currently an analyst for a company that provides business communications solutions.

Rafael graduated from the BS Physics program in June 2016. He is a Leticia Shahani awardee for the Most Outstanding BS Physics Thesis and a 2016 BPI-DOST Science Awardee. In 2014 he worked as a staffer for the OVPAA-BPhD-2012-05 research project and in 2015 as a student assistant for SanD. He later obtained his MS Physics (non-thesis) degree in 2020. Rafael is continuing his studies as a PhD Physics student.

Krishna finished the BS Applied Physics program in 2020. Her research focused on the characterization of the phonon density of states in a graphene junction with beyond nearest-neighbor interactions. Her stay in SanD helped her grow and improved her research and group dynamics skills through her weekly seminars and board games with her fellow labmates. She worked as a data analyst for a mobile application marketing agency for a few years before pursing an Erasmus Mundus Master's degree in Nanoscience and Nanotechnology.  

Jane got her BS Physics degree in 2005. Her research involved the study of phonon thermal conductivity in superlattices. After graduation, she worked as a copy editor of physics manuscripts and a writer of electronic components and computer products articles. She then pursued a career in IT and landed an information developer/architect post for an international ERP manufacturer, where she focused on analytics solutions. Jane now works as a technical writer for government contracting and project accounting solutions.

Mignon graduated from the NIP BS Physics program in 2020. Her BS thesis research was on a computational fluid dynamics simulation of melting ice blocks. After class and lab hours, you could usually find her climbing ropes and lifting barbells at the local CrossFit box. She is now a geophysicist working for an environmental remediation firm.

Patrick graduated cum laude with a BS degree in Applied Physics in 2017. His undergraduate studies were supported by a UP Oblation Scholarship and a DOST Merit Scholarship. For his BS thesis he implemented a version of the Penna model that avoided artificial deaths. In 2015 he was also a project aide for the research project OVPAA-BPhD-2012-05. He worked briefly as an NIP Instructor and is currently a data analyst.

Robbie graduated cum laude from the BS Applied Physics program in 2017 and completed the MS Physics program in 2020. He was supported by a DOST-SEI RA 7687 Undergraduate S&T Scholarship. His research involved using density matrix renormalization group (DMRG) techniques to map out the ground phase diagram of a one-dimensional extended Hubbard model from its correlation functions and entanglement entropy. Robbie was also a student assistant for the OVCRD-funded Project No. 161614 PhDIA. He is now a data scientist working for a credit and finance company.

Klarence completed her BS Chemistry and MS Physics degrees in 2018 and 2022, respectively. Her graduate studies were supported by a DOST-ASTHRDP scholarship. For her master's thesis, her research involved the investigation of thermodynamic properties of an anisotropic spin model with a quantum phase transition.

Nica graduated magna cum laude with a BS Applied Physics degree in 2018. Her work on ballistic thermal transport in graphene junctions was recognized by the College of Science as the Best BS Applied Physics Undergraduate Thesis (Leticia Shahani Award). She was supported by the UPAA of Alberta, UP Presidential, and Angelo King Scholarship grants and worked as a project staffer while a student in SanD. Nica continues her graduate studies under the Condensed Matter Physics Diploma Programme at the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics.

Anjo obtained his BS Applied Physics degree in 2023. In his thesis, he explored the use of the two-dimensional Ising model to simulate the opinion dynamics of a voting population participating in a two-party election system. Outside the SanD laboratory, he works as a music producer and executive assistant for an independent game development studio. He plans to pursue a career in data science to fuel his aspiration to become a game developer.

Rayda studied the thermodynamics and transport properties of two-dimensional electron systems at low temperatures as a SanD researcher. She was also an NIP instructor and a CHED scholar. She obtained her PhD degree in 2011 and was a post-doctoral fellow at the Asia Pacific Center for Theoretical Physics in Pohang, South Korea for three years. Upon her return to the Philippines in 2015 Rayda became a faculty member of the Mapúa Institute of Technology.

Lenie got her Bachelor's degree in Applied Physics in 2006. She worked for a digital content services and solutions provider as an analyst of technical and scientific documents. In 2008 she obtained a Certificate in Information Technology (Applications Development) from the UP ITTC (now ITDC). She later moved to Singapore while performing search engine optimization (SEO) tasks for several technology firms. In 2010 she joined a Singaporean retail company in a management position that handles their e-commerce strategies.

Mico obtained his Bachelor's degree in Physics magna cum laude in early 2024 with the support of DOST RA 7687 Scholarship. For his undergraduate thesis work, he simulated the spread of cells in tissues with reduced food supplies using Monte Carlo methods and agent-based modeling. He now applies his data analysis skills in the finance sector as a risk analyst.

MC received her BS Applied Physics degree in 2020. For her undergraduate research work she applied machine learning algorithms to detect polyps in colonoscopy video frames. This work was cited while she participated in a MOST GASE Summer Program last 2019. She has also interned at the Philippine Genome Center (bioinformatics) and a data science consultancy firm (GIS). She was an Erasmus Mundus scholar from 2020 to 2022, earning an MS degree tackling image processing and computer vision problems. She worked briefly for a bioinformatics project in Singapore before entering a PhD program at Leiden University.

Gene graduated from the BS Physics program in 2022 cum laude. He studied the efficiency of quantum heat engine that uses a Lipkin-Meshkov-Glick magnet as a working substance for his undergraduate thesis. He has since become a Teaching Associate and, later, an Instructor at the National Institute of Physics, where he is also pursuing an MS Physics degree.

Zach got his BS Physics degree in 2024, graduating summa cum laude. His bachelor's thesis covered the effect of cluster geometry on the localization of particles in disordered lattice systems. He developed and honed his skills in computational physics performing simulations for his research. He is currently investigating phonon interactions in chiral spin liquids as an MS Physics student and member of the Theoretical Physics Group.

Gene joined SanD in the academic year following his summer internship in 2013. He obtained his MS Physics (2016) and PhD Physics (2023) degrees with support from the DOST ASTHRD Program. For his master's thesis Gene investigated the role of disorder in topological insulators and for his PhD dissertation he studied PT-symmetry breaking in quantum walks. He has been an instructor at the National Institute of Physics and has done much simulation and modeling work for PHIVOLCS and other research projects.

Oliver obtained his BS degree in Applied Physics in 2006. Shortly after graduation, he joined a development and application support center of a North American retail company as a programmer. He has also worked as a software engineer and analyst for several international management consulting firms and information technology solutions providers. He has since moved to Kuala Lumpur where he has been a senior analyst programmer for a leading Southeast Asian financial and banking company since 2013.

Marites obtained her MS in Physics degree in 2004. She later entered the Diploma Programme of the International Centre for Theoretical Physics in Trieste. After completing the Diploma Programme in condensed matter physics, she continued her PhD studies at the Universiteit Utrecht in the Netherlands. She has since joined a high-tech equipment manufacturing company as a technical supplier engineer.

Salvador (BJ) completed his BS degree in Physics in June 2016. For his undergraduate thesis he computed exact elliptic integral expressions for the average work done in quenched Ising model ground states. In 2015, BJ also worked as a project staffer for the OVPAA-funded Balik PhD research project OVPAA-BPhD-2012-05.