🌏 ISI Academy Mentoring Programme 2025 in action!

As part of the ISI Academy Mentoring Programme 2025, current IASC President (past ISBIS President) Prof. Paulo Canas Rodrigues recently visited the Philippines. He has written a short piece reflecting on his work, activities, and experiences during the visit.

We invite our community to read the article and learn more about the impact of the programme on the ground.

 

 

Between August 9 and September 4, 2025, I conducted two intensive short courses in the Philippines as part of the ISI Academy Visiting Lecturer Program. The courses were organized in partnership with local institutions and drew active participation from students, faculty, and researchers across various regions of Mindanao. Both courses were very successful in terms of engagement, local institutional impact, and regional visibility of the ISI Academy. The courses also helped strengthen emerging collaborations with Caraga State University (CSU), Surigao del Norte State University (SNSU), and Mindanao State University.

Course 1: From Data to Intelligence: Foundations and Frontiers in Machine Learning and AI

Dates: August 11–13, 2025
Location: Caraga State University (CSU), Butuan City
Participants: Over 40 participants from CSU, SNSU, MSU, and other institutions
Format: 3-day in-person course with lectures, hands-on labs (R and Python), and discussions

Main Topics:

  • Machine Learning paradigms and applications
  • Unsupervised Learning: PCA and Clustering
  • Supervised Learning: LDA, QDA, Logistic Regression, Decision Trees, Random Forest, XGBoost
  • Neural Networks: MLPs, RNNs, LSTMs
  • Transformers and Attention Mechanism
  • Large Language Models (LLMs): BERT, GPT, ChatGPT
  • Ethics and Interpretability in AI

Course 2: Time Series Forecasting in the Age of AI: From ARIMA to Neural Networks

Dates: August 18–20, 2025
Location: Surigao del Norte State University (SNSU), Surigao City (Almont Beach Resort)
Participants: ~35 attendees, including representatives from SNSU, CSU, and other institutions
Format: 3-day in-person course with structured lectures, applied labs, and final case studies

Main Topics:

  • Time Series Components, ETS, ARIMA & SARIMA
  • Singular Spectrum Analysis (SSA)
  • Forecast Evaluation & Cross-Validation
  • Hybrid Forecasting Approaches
  • Neural Networks for Forecasting: MLP, RNN, GRU, LSTM
  • Transformer models for sequential prediction

Collaborative Engagements and Outcomes

During the visit, I also engaged in exploratory meetings and informal discussions with students, colleagues, and administrators from several universities, especially from:

  • Caraga State University (CSU)
  • Surigao del Norte State University (SNSU)
  • Mindanao State University (MSU)

These conversations explored potential joint activities, student exchange, data science curriculum development, supervision of students, and possible MoUs under the ISI umbrella. There are real momentum and institutional interest in developing capacity-building programs in statistics, forecasting, and AI in the region.

 

Source: ISI News January 2026