Chona Abeledo

Chona Camille Vince Cruz-Abeledo is an associate professor of the Department of Biology of De La Salle University (DLSU). Throughout her tenure as a professor in DLSU, she has served as the coordinator for the Br. Alfred Shields FSC Marine Station and is currently serving as the project leader of the CrabTECH research team. Owing to her diversified background in research, she has obtained a PhD in Biology from DLSU, a Master’s degree in Environment and Natural Resources Management from the UP Open University, and a BS in Molecular Biology and Biotechnology from the University of the Philippines - Diliman. She also completed a dissertation research program in Applied Genomics at the University of Washington.

Beyond her contributions as a tenured professor and researcher, Dr. Abeledo also has an advocacy of her own—to improve the means of communication between the scientific community and society at large. In pursuit of this goal, she established her science blog and YouTube channel, SHE-ensya.

Contributions:

• Creator of the SHE-ensya blog and channel in pursuit of explaining scientific concepts and events in layman’s terms for society at large.
• Project leader of the CrabTECH team, an interdisciplinary research team dedicated to developing technologies for natural resource management such as Crabifier—a species identification tool for juvenile crabs using image analysis and genetic marker technology, CrabMAP—a heat map tool used to identify coastal areas exhibiting high temperature fluctuation spikes and spikes, high temperature fluctuations and low temperature spikes, and low temperature fluctuations and spikes, and Alinmango—a mangrove crab environment identifier tool used to identify the best sources of mangrove crabs based on environmental factors such as temperature variables and fattening ponds. Additionally, they have created cost-effective, rapid DNA barcoding techniques for independent studies on species.
• Contributed to the growing library of literature on crab research in her studies as a PhD candidate for Biology. Produced various literature on determining distinguishing features of mudcrabs based on morphological features.

Awards:

• Outstanding Asian Science Diplomat Award, 2021
• Cohort of Southeast Asia Women Leaders, 2021
• Best Paper Presentation at the 1st International Conference on Biotechnology, Bioengineering, Biorefinery and Pollution Prevention, 2019
• Outstanding Research and Development Award for Emerging Technologies, 2015