NSYSU - Monique Mercado from the Philippines

I always wanted to further my studies abroad to experience a different setting, however, I am a family person as well. I want to see my family as often as possible. This is the reason why I chose Taiwan. Its proximity to my country, the Philippines will allow my family to visit me anytime in just 2 hours. Aside from that, they can also experience flying to a different country with a minimum budget.

I was already working with local marine protected areas (MPAs) in the Philippines, and I want to further my studies in this field as well, particularly in planning MPAs to maximize both ecological and socioeconomic benefits from our ocean. I am blessed to meet a professor here whose expertise lies on marine environmental systems analysis and optimization where I learned to think holistically and develop models that generate best environmental protection scenarios to assist decision-making.

Before coming here, I was only thinking about enhancing my skills to benefit my country, but my experience here changed my perspective from thinking local to global. Now, I am working on developing a transboundary marine protected area within the Philippines, Taiwan, and Japan that will hopefully open doors of cooperation between national governments to co-manage the protection of the Kuroshio region not just for our own benefit but also for the next generation.