Assoc. Prof. Richard Thomas B. Pavia, Jr., PhD, academic researcher of the Department of Biological Sciences and the Research Center for the Natural and Applied Sciences, was elected to a three-year term as President of the Federation of Institutions of Marine and Freshwater Sciences (FIMFS) during the organization鈥檚 convention in October 2024 at Davao Oriental State University.
Pavia, the immediate past Chair of the Department of Biological Sciences, has worked on non-native aquatic organisms and non-native freshwater fish species. In 2023, he published an article warning about the risk of non-native fishes invading due to climate change, with Lake Taal as the study site. Recently, he co-authored the article 鈥淒evelopment and application of a second-generation multilingual tool for invasion risk screening of non-native terrestrial plants.鈥�
First chartered in 1968, FIFMS now has over twenty-three members comprised of both public and private higher education institutions. The federation provides an avenue for greater collaboration among members through collaborative research undertakings and the sharing of expertise and resources.
