UP finance, research, HR, and procurement employees undergo in-depth AI upskilling
21 November 2025 | Written by: Marianne Yzabelle P. Laron
QUEZON CITY, PHILIPPINES – The University of the Philippines (UP) Office of the Vice President for Digital Transformation (OVPDx) is organizing the Dx Labs AI for Institutional Transformation in UP Workshop—an intensive program designed to address the AI capacity needs of the Filipino workforce and harness AI to solve real organizational challenges.
Unlike typical AI training programs, this four-month initiative (November 2025–February 2026) builds sustained institutional capacity. The goal: empower UP staff to apply AI to complex, strategic work—not just routine tasks.
“What sets this initiative apart is its grounding in the real operational contexts where our staff work,” said Peter A. Sy, UP Vice President for Digital Transformation. “We’re building not just technical proficiency, but institutional wisdom: the capacity to deploy AI judiciously, recognize its inherent limitations and biases, and maintain rigorous standards for data security and protection.”
UP participants from all Constituent Universities will receive intensive instruction across four core AI areas: privacy-preserving data analytics, financial and academic analytics, AI infrastructure, and insight-to-action case development.
Timeline of Activities from November 2025 to February 2026
By February 2026, 40 staff from finance, research, human resources, and procurement offices will demonstrate how AI can streamline their core processes and workflows. Real operational problems from participants’ offices shall serve as training datasets.
“The aim is to operationalize the use of agentic AI for workflow automation, in-house data–driven question answering, and informed decision making. For example, we can assign an AI agent to help students prepare a plan of study for the remaining semesters until graduation, based on enrollment data, projected course offerings, prerequisites, and the student’s academic record. This task is typically performed manually by an academic advisor, making it both time-consuming and prone to errors,” said Dr. Rowel Atienza, Professor of Electrical and Electronics Engineering at UP Diliman and one of the key resource persons for the workshop.
The workshop will also be led by various resource persons from UP and the government, including Dr. Richelle Ann Juayong, Asst. Prof. Jozelle Addawe, Dr. Jhoirene Clemente of the UP Diliman Department of Computer Science, and Mr. Jeffrey Aborot of the Department of Science and Technology – Advanced Science and Technology Institute (DOST-ASTI).
This initiative supports UP President Angelo Jimenez’s Flagship Program 10 on Digital Transformation and aligns with UN Sustainable Development Goal 9 (Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure). By building in-house expertise and custom AI solutions, UP reduces dependence on costly external vendors while addressing its unique operational requirements.
To stay updated on the workshop’s progress and future similar events, you may follow the University of the Philippines (UP) Office of the Vice President for Digital Transformation’s (OVPDx) Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/upovpdx.
For more information, reach out to the UP OVPDx email at: [email protected].