Applied Mathematics students present papers at the 4th ICoAIMS conference

Last August, a group of recently graduated Applied Mathematics students presented research papers at the 4^th International Conference on Applied & Industrial Mathematics and Statistics (ICoAIMS) 2023 held in Kuantan, Malaysia. This year’s theme was “Mathematics and Statistics for Technological Society.” Topics covered in the conference ranged from pure mathematics to applied mathematics in data science, engineering, and operational research. 

Six (6) papers, which were all outputs of their respective undergraduate theses, were accepted for oral presentation. These were:

• "Assessing the Optimality of a Three-Part Pricing Policy for an Asset-Sharing Platform in the Philippines" by Cristina Bianca Mallari, Helene Ivanne Sy, and Julienne Joan Yap

• "Modeling Pooled Procurement of Philippine Department of Health Drugs and Medicines using Regression" by Chloe Marie Dy-Liacco, Theresa Denise Magsajo, and Kimberlee Say

• "Dynamic Portfolio Optimization According to Market States and Diversification using Hierarchical Clustering" by Andrei Lanz Malabaguio, Ralph Luis Gabriel Pimentel

• "What do Filipino Children Eat: Applying Market Basket Analysis on the Meals of School-aged Children in the Philippines" by Enzo Gabriel Castillon, Richell Isaiah Flores, and Jacob Lim

• "Applying XGBoost, Neural Networks, and Oversampling in the Undernutrition Classification of School-Aged Children in the Philippines" by Mark Kevin Ong Yiu and Carlo Gabriel Pastor 

• "Binary Classification of Glomeruli using Convolutional Neural Networks" by Wilbert Garganera, Syou Katsumi, Joachim Regalado

At the conference's closing ceremony, it was announced that two groups won "Best Paper Awards," namely, the group of Mallari, Sy, and Yap for Operations Research and the group of Malabaguio and Pimentel for Data Science.

For Helene Sy (BS AMF '23), who was in Malaysia to represent her group, presenting their research internationally was already a significant honor. She says "the experience of attending the conference was enlightening as we were able to hear more about the insights of experts in their field and share our own research in the hopes of sharing its impact with others."  She also credits their thesis adviser (Mr Daniel Joseph Benito) and the Ateneo Department of Mathematics for their guidance.  

On the other hand, Lanz Malabaguio (BS AMDSc '23), who is also currently taking his Master in Data Science in the Ateneo Department of Mathematics, says that their win made him even prouder of their research output. Looking back at his whole experience in Malaysia, he says "Hearing about the works of others made me realize that there is so much more to learn about data science aside from what I have already studied so far. Overall, I found it to be a fun and informative experience, and I look forward to learning more in the future.”

Dr Clark Kendrick Go, Program Adviser of the Data Science program and Research Group Leader of the Collaborative Analytics Lab, believes that their participation in ICoAIMS 2023 was a good opportunity for undergraduate students to showcase their research output. "More importantly, the conference serves as a venue not just for academic exchange but also for cultural understanding, as we continue to navigate an interconnected world," he added.

For many of these students, this was their very first participation in an international conference. Congratulations to all student paper presenters and their thesis advisers for a job well done!