PHILIPPINES
Wilfredo is a Kankana-ey Igorot and Ilocano with roots from Sabangan, Mountain Province and Tayug, Pangasinan, Philippines.
He is a professor of Mathematics at the University of the Philippines in Baguio City (UP Baguio). His education and academic training in mathematics from UP Baguio and the University of Auckland has brought him to a whole field of human ideas and activities that impact math learning, encompassing disciplines like philosophy, anthropology, sociology, history and ecology. His research interest is on the interplay of mathematics/mathematics education, and culture, Indigenous Peoples’ education and Indigenous Knowledge Systems.
He was a recipient of the 2019 Australian Executive Leadership Award that allowed him to stay at the University of Tasmania in Launceston, Tasmania from April to June 2019 and learn from their work on indigenous education. Since 2012, he has been involved in Indigenous Peoples’ Education efforts, helping several Cordillera, Mangyan, and Ayta elementary and secondary teachers develop culturally relevant lessons in mathematics and other subjects. He was also involved in the development of an Indigenous Curriculum Framework in support of the Indigenous Peoples’ Education program of the Department of Education (DepEd), and currently, in the Teaching Science for Indigenous Students project of the Department of Science and Technology (DOST)-Philippines and the IPs Education Office (IPsEO) of the Department of Education-Philippines.
Wilfredo was the only Filipino member of the Task Force on Indigenous and Local Knowledge (TF-ILK) of the UN Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), from 2014 to 2018. Since 2007, he has served as the chair of the Board of Directors of the Cordillera Disaster Response and Development Services, an NGO involved in disaster response and community development in the Cordillera region and in northern Philippines.
As a mathematician and mathematics educator, his teaching, research, public and extension works are largely informed and dictated by an interdisciplinary and critical perspective arising from his academic training and his being an indigenous person and activist.