Dr. Mark Lexter De Lara is the current Head of the Mathematics Division of the Institute of Mathematical Sciences and Physics, College of Arts and Sciences, UP Los Baños. 

He finished a BS in Applied Mathematics major in Operations Research from UP Los Baños, MS in Applied Mathematics Major in Optimization and Approximation from UP Diliman, and Ph.D. in Mathematics from UP Diliman. 

Very recently, he published his dissertation, Persistent Homology Classification Algorithm at PeerJ Computer Science, where he proposes a supervised classification algorithm that uses persistent homology of classes of data points. His research interests include quantitative management and decision science, metaheuristics, optimization, machine learning, and data science.