Bio

Born and partially raised in Bohol, an island in the Philippines rich in natural resources, Stephanie has seen the consequences of environmental degradation due to various causes when she moved to Manila to pursue her tertiary education. The experience brought her to realize that science has always been used in research and practice by many Filipinos, but failed to fully implement and communicate its uses dynamically and efficiently to the public. 

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Stephanie started her career as a math lecturer in an educational center in Manila. She then moved to become the executive assistant of Dr. Rogel Mari Sese, an astrophysicist with whom she worked for in many projects such as implementing the first ever astronomy and space science education program in the Philippines at the Diliman Preparatory School and which will be a study basis for implementation in a national level.

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Among the important tasks working for Sese was being part of the team that led to the establishment of the Philippine Space Agency. In relation to this milestone, the Philippine Space Act was just recently passed into law on August 2019.

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Stephanie is also a multi-awarded freelance photographer and science journalist, both for the BusinessMirror. She has also received recognition for her advocacies such as that in the Girl Scouts of the Philippines and her public service to communicate science.

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Stephanie has a bachelor's degree in Applied Physics and obtained it at the University of the Philippines Los Banos (2010). Meanwhile, her master's degree in Environmental Engineering was completed at the University of the Philippines Diliman (2015). She also pursued her second master's degree - Copernicus Master in Digital Earth, which is a joint programme by the University of Salzburg under the Department of Geoinformatics in Austria, and the University of Southern Brittany in France (2021). Currently, she's currently working on her PhD on modelling, prediction and anomaly detection of Earth surface dynamics at the Technical University of Munich, in collaboration with Imperial College London.