Dr. Joey Balmaceda is Professor of Mathematics and former College of Science Dean at UP Diliman, where he has been teaching for 41 years now. He says that one of the things that kept him sane and hopeful during the pandemic was handling the GE course Math, Culture and Society.

Ruben Carranza is a Senior Expert at the ICTJ. He works with truth commissions, reparations programs and various international and domestic courts and is an expert on the intersection of transitional justice, accountability for corruption, and violations of economic and social rights. Prior to joining the ICTJ, Ruben was a commissioner from 2001-2004 in the Philippines’ post-dictatorship commission that successfully recovered $680 Million in ill-gotten assets of the family of Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos hidden in banks in Switzerland and other foreign countries. From 1998 to 2000, he was an assistant secretary of national defense in the Philippines. He obtained his B.A. and LL.B. degrees from the University of the Philippines and an LL.M. from New York University (NYU) in 2005 as a Global Public Service Law Program scholar.

Prof. Joel Cuello, Ph.D. is Professor of Biosystems Engineering, Director of the Biosystems Engineering (BioImagineering) Laboratory, and Director of Graduate Studies for Interdisciplinary Applied Biosciences (Bioeconomy and New Food Systems) at The University of Arizona in Tucson, Arizona, U.S.A. He is also Vice Chair of the International Association for Vertical Farming (AVF) based in Munich, Germany. He earned his Ph.D. in Agricultural & Biological Engineering, with Minor in Chemical Engineering, from The Pennsylvania State University where he also earned two M.S. degrees (Agricultural & Biological Engineering; Plant Physiology). He obtained his B.S. in Agricultural Engineering (cum laude) from the University of the Philippines at Los Banos. He is a Lifetime Visiting Professor at Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, China and a Faculty Fellow at De La Salle University and Ateneo de Manila University in the Philippines.

A globally recognized expert in the engineering of sustainable biological and agricultural systems, Prof. Cuello has 33 years of experience in research, teaching and outreach on innovations in controlled environment agriculture (CEA) for the sustainable production of food and high-value bioproducts, including for bioregenerative space life support applications.

Jose “Butch” Dalisay Jr., PhD, has published over 40 books of fiction and nonfiction. He is Professor Emeritus of English at the University of the Philippines. In his 35 years of teaching, he made it a point to teach at least one undergraduate class every semester as much as possible.

Ramon Guillermo is the Director of the Center for International Studies (CIS) in UP Diliman. He was a member of the General Education Movement (GEM) in UP Diliman which was established in 2001 as a response of General Education (GE) advocates to the system-wide introduction of the Revitalized General Education Program (RGEP). He subsequently contributed to discussions on the review and revision of the RGEP after ten years of its implementation. In 2017, he participated in the strenuous University-wide debates and discussions which, despite the best efforts of GE advocates, eventually led to the reduction of the GE Program from 45 units to 21 units. He has written a number of essays and manifestos on GE.  One of his areas of interest is on the matter of the purported “interdisciplinarization” of GE.