From Iloilo’s shores to Taiwan’s labs: The PhD journey of Rhessa Grace Ortizo

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At first glance, Rhessa Grace Guanga Ortizo is every inch the scholar—31 years old, armed with fisheries degrees from UP Visayas, and fresh from completing her Ph.D. at the National Kaohsiung University of Science and Technology (NKUST). But behind the credentials is someone more personal: a proud daughter of Iloilo, grounded in Dingle, who reads each lab notebook and classroom lecture as part of a story about kinship, community resilience, and building a nation.

“Iloilo is home,” she affirms, steady and sure. Its coastlines shaped her, its seas sustained her people, and its promise made fisheries feel like destiny. It wasn’t a sudden choice but a steady truth: Iloilo lives through its seas, and she wanted her work to help preserve that flow of life.

That truth found a home at ISUFST, the country’s pioneering fisheries university. Her mother, Tessie Ortizo, was a faculty member and former campus administrator in Dingle, gently nudging her daughter to plant her roots at the institution. “She introduced me to Dr. Noel Armada, who at that time was looking for someone with a post-harvest specialization,” Rhessa recalls. “From then on, ISUFST became my anchor—my colleagues at the College of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences (CFAS), the students, and my own passion to teach and research kept me here.”

For CFAS Dean Rolindo Demo-os, Ortizo’s work captures the research path the college envisions. “Her studies reflect the kind of scholarship we aspire to—innovative, sustainable, and responsive to the needs of the fisheries sector. By turning waste into value and knowledge into action, Dr. Ortizo shows the impact-driven research that strengthens ISUFST’s identity as the country’s pioneering fisheries university. At CFAS, our mantra is ‘We learn, we sustain,’ and her achievement is a living testament to that vision.”

ISUFST Vice President for Academic Affairs Dr. Joan Belga echoed this, saying Ortizo’s journey embodies what the university hopes for in its faculty: “She proves that when our scholars go out into the world, they don’t just earn degrees—they return with knowledge, values, and innovations that enrich ISUFST as a research university committed to serving communities.”

From fish waste to future medicine

The next chapter of her story came through a door that ISUFST had opened years before her: a memorandum of understanding with the then-National Kaohsiung Marine University, now NKUST. From that partnership came a scholarship program that she applied for online, with no assurance except faith and a fierce curiosity. “It was ISCOF [Iloilo State College of Fisheries], now ISUFST [Iloilo State University of Fisheries Science and Technology], that informed me of the scholarship. Without that connection, I wouldn’t have found myself in Kaohsiung.”

At NKUST’s College of Hydrosphere Science, Ortizo entered a world that blurred lab coats and global issues. She joined the seafood science research team under Professors Dong and Tsai, and found herself handling not just microscopes and centrifuges but questions with global weight: How do we make aquaculture sustainable, waste productive, and food healthier?

Her dissertation might sound like a technical riddle, but its heartbeat is simple: she worked on turning fish visceral waste—yes, the guts often thrown away—into proteins and bioactive peptides that could help manage diabetes. “We used environmentally safe solvents to recover proteins and then convert them into peptides targeting DPP-IV inhibition,” she explains. In layman’s terms: fish guts as medicine.

Why does this matter? Because diabetes is rising globally, especially in the Philippines, where cheap yet safe treatments are desperately needed. While communities fight diabetes, our coastlines battle a different enemy—heaps of discarded fish byproducts that choke ecosystems. Rhessa’s study offers a rare double win, hitting the targets of SDG 3 (Good Health and Well-Being), SDG 12 (Responsible Consumption and Production), and SDG 14 (Life Below Water) in one stroke. It’s the circular economy at its most elegant: solving a human disease while reducing environmental waste.

Her research days in Kaohsiung were grueling—“coffee was your only fuel because missing one step in an assay could ruin the whole experiment”—but deeply rewarding. She mastered biotechnology tools like Western blot, ELISA, and DNA sequencing, skills she plans to transfer to ISUFST’s fisheries labs. “The challenge is not just finishing a Ph.D. The challenge is how to bring home what I’ve learned and make it work in Iloilo,” she reflects.

And she will. Already, she has lined up projects back home: collagen extraction from fish byproducts, improving shrimp drying technologies in Banate Barotac Bay, and reviving her modules on post-harvest fisheries. “I want students to see research not as something abstract but as something they can hold, taste, and use in their communities.”

ISUFST President Dr. Nordy Siason Jr. adds a broader perspective: “Dr. Ortizo embodies what the university stands for—grounded in community, but global in vision. Her journey shows that world-class research doesn’t need to begin in big cities—it can start in Iloilo and still reach the world. She proves ISUFST’s mission isn’t just words, but a promise lived out.”

Coming home, carrying knowledge

Living in Taiwan reshaped her perspective. She was struck by how reliant the country was on aquaculture technology rather than wild catch—an echo of what Philippine fisheries might face in the near future. She also discovered how language could be both barrier and bridge. “Most of my labmates didn’t speak English. Instead of them teaching me Mandarin, I taught them English. Now they’re good English speakers,” she laughs.

But even abroad, she was never alone. “The Filipino community was very supportive. ISUFST also never left me behind, constantly encouraging me to finish on time,” she says, adding her gratitude to NKUST’s international student scholarship grant. She realized the Ph.D. was never hers alone. It was a shared victory, lifted by family love, mentor wisdom, funder trust, and colleagues whose support crossed both time zones and borders.

Her balance came from lifting and running—two habits that spoke volumes. Lifting reminded her of the discipline in small, repeated steps; running mirrored the long, uncertain road of research. Both demanded grit, both required trust in the process, and both reminded her that every finish line leads to another race.

She has also presented her work on global stages, like at a conference in Hakodate, Japan, where feedback not only affirmed her research but stoked her fire to keep going. With all parts of her dissertation now published in SCIE- and Scopus-indexed journals, she joins the growing league of ISUFST faculty whose names resonate beyond Philippine shores.

As she resumes her post at ISUFST, Ortizo is clear-eyed about the tasks ahead: strengthen labs, mentor students, publish more, and most importantly, extend her research to Western Visayas communities. “Technology transfer is the goal,” she insists. Her dream is to see local processors—not just scientists—benefit from innovations in fish waste valorization or shrimp drying. In her words: “Research that stays in papers is incomplete. Research must serve people.”

In the end, her journey is not just about a Ph.D. earned in Taiwan. It is about a daughter of Iloilo carrying knowledge across seas, then planting it back in her community. It is about ISUFST proving, once again, that a university in the Visayas can hold its own in the global knowledge-based society. And it is about reminding every student that the gut of an oyster, or the waste of a tilapia, may hold solutions to humanity’s greatest problems—if only we dare to look closer. (Herman Lagon/PAMMCO)