Mathematics and Statistics trailblazer Felicia Magpantay (Department of Mathematics and Statistics) has earned one of the two 2024 Senator Tobias C. Enverga Jr. Medals of Excellence for demonstrating strong leadership and making significant contributions towards the betterment of their communities.
Senator Tobias C. Enverga Jr. Medals of Excellence recognize Filipino-Canadian community leaders and/organizations who act as a role model and possesses the ability to inspire a group of people to achieve community-based goals within the community, holds themselves to the highest of ethical and professional standards, is accomplished and serves the community, and respects and promotes different cultures and values.
“I grew up in Metro Manila and left home when I received an undergraduate scholarship at Trent University,” Dr. Magpantay says. “Except for a postdoc in Michigan and sabbatical at Oxford, I’ve lived in Canada ever since. The award is a great honour for me, it feels like something that really recognizes my specific journey. There aren’t very many Filipinos in academia.”
The late Senator Enverga was the voice of Filipinos in Canada. He was the first Canadian Senator of Filipino descent and the first to be elected in the City of Toronto as a school board trustee, having served as a Toronto Catholic District School Board trustee in 2010.
Before coming to Canada, Dr. Magpantay’s first experience abroad was traveling for the International Physics Olympiad. She recalled that “meeting so many people from around the world encouraged me to dream about going abroad for my university degree.”
When she went to Trent University, she majored in math and physics and eventually decided to go to graduate school in applied math. She went to Western for her masters and McGill for her doctorate. She did a one-year post-doc at York, and two years at the University of Michigan. She accepted her first faculty position at the University of Manitoba in 2015, then moved to Queen’s in 2017.
“I am very happy to be part of Queen’s. We have a very collegial environment in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics. It’s great to have a community that cares a lot about both research and teaching.”
Currently, Dr. Magpantay works on differential equations, numerical methods, and statistical inference, with applications in ecology, epidemiology and public health. Her work has been funded by NSERC, CIHR, the Canadian Foundation for Innovation, and the Ontario Research Fund.
“This is a real honour,” says Sharon Regan, Acting Associate Dean (Research). “Dr. Magpantay is a role model as a researcher and instructor, for her students as well as for young women and others from equity deserving communities who are considering a career in STEM fields.”
Learn more about the award on the webpage.
Of note, Dr. Magpantay is offering a workshop this summer running July 24 and 25 in Chernoff Hall. The theme of the Workshop on Mathematical Ecology is Phylodynamics, the study of the processes that give rise to phylogenetic trees. She explains that during an epidemic, the emergence of "variants of concern" is shaped by evolutionary pressures such as vaccination and competition. The COVID-19 pandemic led to an explosion in collection of genetic data and surveillance of evolving strains, but this has also highlighted the gap between our capacity to collect this data and our capability to use it to make predictions.
The workshop will bring together researchers working in the areas of stochastic models of disease spread and evolution, perspectives from public health, and computational phylogenetics and statistical inference. Interested? Apply to participate.