Tomenes and Tadeo complete back-to-back for Ateneo Math in PH Math Society PhD award

Dr Mark D Tomenes (PhD Math ‘21) and Dr Gwendolyn Tadeo (PhD Math ‘19) won consecutive Outstanding PhD Graduate awards, the highest citation for Filipino PhD Mathematics and PhD Applied Mathematics graduates from a Philippine university, in the 2024 and 2023 Annual Conventions of the Mathematical Society of the Philippines (MSP) held in UP Tacloban College and Ateneo de Manila University, respectively.

The Outstanding PhD graduate award is conferred by the MSP to new PhD graduates who exhibited excellence in their PhD Math or PhD Applied Math program of a Philippine university, and who is also younger than 40 years old.

The judging was based on their PhD dissertation and other scientific publications based on it, their grades in their PhD coursework, and their other contributions to the advancement of mathematics in the Philippines.

Dr Tomenes is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mathematics of Ateneo de Manila University. Meanwhile, Dr Tadeo is a Professor at Saint Louis University in Baguio City.

After the conferment of his award, Dr Tomenes presented a talk on “Edge-to-edge tilings with vertex, edge, and tile transitive properties”, which is a part of his larger PhD dissertation under the supervision of his adviser, Dr Ma Louise Antonette N de las Peñas.

As joint work with his adviser, parts of his dissertation were published in two reputable journals – the Journal of Mathematics and the Arts and Contributions to Discrete Mathematics; in which his article is to appear in 2025.

Dr. Tomenes graduated BS Mathematics, magna cum laude and valedictorian, from the Central Luzon State University and MS Mathematics from the Ateneo de Manila University.

He was a recipient of the Department of Science and Technology’s Accelerated Science and Technology Human Resources Development Program (DOST-ASTHRDP) Scholarship.

Before delivering his short lecture as the 2024 awardee, Dr Tomenes, shaking with both joy and anticipation, thanked his adviser, DOST, and his colleagues in the Ateneo Math department, specifically members of the research group he was part of, the Symmetries in Algebra and Geometry (SAGE) Group, whom he considered his closest family during his PhD journey.

Dr Gwendolyn Tadeo won last year while part of the Ateneo Aperiodic Systems Laboratory under the advisory of Dr Eden Delight Miro. She is still part of the research laboratory to this day.

She was awarded the Outstanding PhD graduate award on 4 June 2023, at the Leong Hall Auditorium in the Ateneo campus.

Dr Tadeo, a graduate of BS Mathematics, magna cum laude, in Saint Louis University and MS Mathematics in UP Baguio, completed her PhD dissertation on the “Mixing of Random Substitutions” under the supervision of Dr Miro and Dr Daniel Rust of the Open University in the United Kingdom. She studied under the Commission on Higher Education K-12 Scholarship Grant.

In her conferment lecture, she talked about the results from their paper "Topological Mixing of Random Substitutions", a joint work with Dr Miro, Dr Rust, and Professor Lorenzo Sadun of the University of Texas at Austin, published in the Israel Journal of Mathematics, a top-tier journal in mathematics. Another part of her dissertation was published in the Tsukuba Journal of Mathematics in a joint work with Dr Miro, Dr Rust, and Dr Neil Mañibo of Bielefeld University, also an alumnus of the Ateneo math graduate program. 

Her award was conferred by the MSP National Board and the Advisory Board, and was announced by Dr Jumela Sarmiento (†).

In her acceptance speech, Dr Tadeo remarked the immense difficulty that she faced during her dissertation making process but was sufficiently built up by a supportive scaffolding led by her advisers Dr Miro and Dr Rust.

She also thanked Professor Michael Baake of Bielefeld University for the support and inviting her to visit Bielefeld in 2019 allowing her to work with Dr Rust directly. During this research trip, she was also able to visit and present her work at Utrecht University and TU Delft, Netherlands.

Notably, Dr Tadeo was also chosen as the Class of 2020 representative for the Graduate Programs during the 2020 Ateneo de Manila graduation rites, the de facto Batch Valedictorian for the graduate programs of Loyola Schools, in recognition for her outstanding performance in the completion of her degree.

This has been Ateneo's third win in the four years the prestigious award has been conferred by the MSP. Dr Eduard Taganap (PhD Math 2017) won the inaugural award during the 2019 MSP National Convention held at General Santos City. Dr Taganap is now a professor at the Central Luzon State University (CLSU) and is also a student of Dr de Las Peñas.

Taganap, like Tomenes, was also a recipient of the DOST-ASTHRDP scholarship. His dissertation was on “Monocoronal tilings from isohedral tilings” where he published parts of his results to two journal articles: “Hyperbolic isocoronal tilings” in Journal of Mathematics and the Arts (2018) and “k-Isocoronal tilings” in Acta Crystallographica Section A: Foundations and Advances (2019). Until January 2024, he served as the department chairman of CLSU’s Department of Mathematics and Physics.