A Report by Jose Ernie C. Lope and Editha C. Jose
A conference on partial differential equations (PDEs) and related areas was held on February 10-14, 2025 at the Paradise Garden Resort Hotel & Convention Center in Boracay Island, Aklan, Philippines. This was attended by 55 participants, of which 24 were oral presenters and 17 were poster presenters. There were 38 male and 17 female participants; 34 were from institutions in the Philippines, 8 from Japan, 4 from France, 2 each from Spain and Indonesia, and one each from Austria, India, Italy, Poland, and South Korea. Of the 34 Philippine-based participants, five were from Mindanao, two from the Visayas, nine from Luzon (excluding the National Capital Region), and the rest were from the NCR.
History
From 2005 to 2007, an EU-ASIA LINK-funded program called International Master’s in Applied Mathematics and Information Sciences (IMAMIS) enabled the visits of more than a dozen European experts to the Institute of Mathematics of UP Diliman. This program led to enhancements of the Institute’s MS in Applied Mathematics (MSAM) program, and students were now able to choose Numerical Analysis of Differential Equations as one of the tracks/specializations within the MSAM program.
The 2010s saw the return from Europe of young Filipino PhDs who specialized in PDEs and allied fields, thus creating a critical mass of specialists. With the growing interest in differential equations and their applications in the modeling of natural phenomena, a CIMPA Research School entitled Partial Differential Equations: Analysis, Numerics and Applications to Floods and Tsunamis was organized in mid-2014 in UP Diliman, with Patrizia Donato from the University of Rouen, and Jose Ernie Lope and Marian Roque from the University of the Philippines Diliman, as the school’s administrative and scientific coordinators.
Inspired by the success of the CIMPA School, the organizers deemed it proper and timely to provide young researchers on differential equations and mathematical modeling with a platform to present their results. This led to the organization of the International Conference on Partial Differential Equations: General Theory and Variational Problems that was held in Cebu in January 2016. The speakers at this conference presented results on a range of topics, from classical solutions of PDEs in the complex domain, to the weak and numerical solutions of PDEs, including their applications.
There were informal talks to hold a follow-up conference several years after the 2016 conference, but unfortunately none materialized, and then the pandemic happened. PDEs 2025 is thus a long-delayed sequel to the 2016 PDE conference, aimed at again bringing together mathematicians from Europe, Japan, South Asia and Southeast Asia, to re-establish the friendly ties among the participants of the 2016 Conference, and to further expand this network of mathematicians working on PDEs. This is also a chance for Filipino researchers to showcase their progress since the 2016 conference.
The Organizers
The Scientific Committee of PDEs 2025 was composed of Patrizia Donato (Université de Rouen Normandie), Editha Jose (University of the Philippines Los Baños), Jose Ernie Lope (University of the Philippines Diliman), Alberto Lastra (Universidad de Alcalá), Javier Sanz Gil (Universidad de Valladolid), and Hiroshi Yamazawa (Shibaura Institute of Technology). Of these, Donato, Lope and Yamazawa were also among the organizers of the 2016 PDE conference. The Organizing Committee was chaired by Jose Ernie Lope and co-chaired by Editha Jose. The other members of the Committee were Jake M. Avila, Rheadel G. Fulgencio, Rolando B. Perez III, and Marian P. Roque, all from the UP Diliman Institute of Mathematics.
Conference Program
There were 24 oral presentations, where the more senior researchers were allotted 45 minutes, while the younger ones were given 30 minutes each. A five-minute Q & A followed each of the oral presentations. To allow more researchers to present their work, a poster session was held on Tuesday afternoon. There were a total of 17 poster presentations. The poster session turned out to be quite successful because most of the participants stayed and discussed with the poster presenters beyond the time allotted for the poster session.
Conference Support
The conference was supported by several local and international organizations: the International Mathematical Union - Commission for Developing Countries (IMU-CDC), the International Council for Applied and Industrial Mathematics (ICIAM), the University of the Philippines System - Office of International Linkages (OIL), the Office of Naval Research Global (ONRG), the French Embassy in Manila, and the Mathematical Society of the Philippines (MSP). The grant from ICIAM enabled the organizers to invite with full support (transportation, accommodations, and registration fee) one Indonesian and three Filipino participants. In addition, partial support was provided to seven other Filipino participants, as these participants also received partial support elsewhere.