Dr. Maria Victoria Carpio-Bernido is an alumna of the BS Physics program of the National Institute of Physics (NIP) when it was still then a department in 1982. She became an Instructor at the NIP in 1983. She later pursued her PhD in Physics at the State University of New York at Albany, New York. When she returned to the NIP with her husband, Dr. Christopher C. Bernido in 1989, she inspired many of her students to become physicists themselves with her insightful and passionate teaching in electromagnetism and in solving quantum mechanics problems using the path integral method. The Bernidos left UP Diliman in the late 1990’s to become the lead educators of the Central Visayan Institute Foundation (CVIF) – a private high school in Jagna, Bohol. It was here that they conceived the CVIF Dynamic Learning Program. This is the “learning-by-doing” pedagogy to promote independent learning that takes into consideration the way of life of students with socioeconomic needs. This has been adapted in many high schools in the country and recognized by DepEd as a crisis-resilient strategy for basic education. For this work, they both received the Ramon Magsaysay Award in 2010. They also founded the Research Center for Theoretical Physics (RCTP) located also in Jagna. RCTP has conducted several international workshops in stochastic analysis and mathematical models in physics. Ma’am Marivic passed away this 6th of January 2022 at the age of 60. Her memory and legacy will live on in her students whom she taught, the teachers she trained, and the researchers she collaborated with throughout her life.
A video, courtesy of Dr. Maricor Soriano, with tributes from her students while she was at UP Diliman is made available at: https://youtu.be/sYF7Q647vdE .