The Society of Medical Physicists in the Republic of the Philippines (SMPRP) awarded the 1st Luciano N. Niguidula Service Award to ten medical physicists on September 3, 2022. Of the ten, four—Agnette dP. Peralta, Bayani C. San Juan, Marlon Raul Z. Tecson, and Nathaniel B. de Vera are current faculty members and two—Lilian V. Rodriguez and Aida M. Lobriguito are former faculty members in the Master of Science in Applied Physics major in Medical Physics program of the UST Graduate School. The awarding ceremony was held in Seda Hotel in Makati City.
During the same ceremony, the 2nd Dr. Celia T. Anatalio Lifetime Achievement Award was also given to Agnette dP. Peralta and Lilian V. Rodriguez. The same award was also received by Eulinia M. Valdezco in 2017. She was also an academic staff under the Medical Physics program of the Graduate School.
The two awards were established to honor the two most important persons in the birth of medical physics in the country – Engr. Luciano Niguidula and Dr. Celia Anatalio. The late Luciano N. Niguidula, affectionately known as Tatang, was originally an x-ray engineer who underwent specialized training and eventually became the first Filipino medical physicist. He worked continuously for 75 years and died at the age of 98. Tatang was the first mentor in medical physics of Ms. Peralta and Ms. Rodriguez. On the other hand, Dr. Celia T. Anatalio is the Mother of Medical Physics in the Philippines. As a radiologist and a radiation oncologist, she knew of the important role of the physicist in medicine. She was instrumental in the establishment in 1981 of the Medical Physics Master’s Program in the UST Graduate School as a joint project of the Department of Health, the then Philippine Atomic Energy Commission, and UST, with technical assistance for ten years from the International Atomic Energy Agency.
