Dr. Cynthia Palmes-Saloma is presently a Professor of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology and Principal Investigator at the Laboratory of Molecular and Cell Biology (LMCB) in the National Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology in UP Diliman. She currently serves as the Executive Director of the Philippine Genome Center, University of the Philippines System.

Dr. Palmes-Saloma received her Ph.D. in Physiology in 1998 and her MS in Medical Science in 1995 from Osaka University, Japan. She holds two Bachelor’s degrees, one in Molecular Biology from Nagoya University (1993) and the other in Fisheries from UP Visayas, where she finished her course in 3.5 years graduating with magna cum laude honors in October 1987. She was a recipient of the Monbusho scholarship as an undergraduate and MS student and became a research fellow of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) while pursuing her PhD degree. She joined NIMBB in 1998 and started the Neurobiology Research Group which has now evolved into the Laboratory of Molecular and Cell Biology (LMCB). For her contributions in teaching, she was awarded the UP Diliman Centennial Gawad Chancellor para sa Natatanging Guro Award in 2008.

Dr. Palmes-Saloma served as past President of the Philippine Society for Biochemisty and Molecular Biology, the Philippine Society for Cell Biology as well as the Outstanding Young Scientists’ Inc.-Philippine Academy of Young Scientists. She started the PGC DNA Sequencing Core Laboratory in 2012 and was appointed as PGC Executive Director in 2017. Since April 2020, the Philippine Genome Center Clinical Genomics Laboratory has been licensed by the DOH as a COVID-19 RT-PCR testing laboratory. Their PGC team, together with the NIMBB UP Diliman and NIH UP Manila, has been helping the DOH in training medtechs around the country to expand local capacity in COVID-19 testing by RT PCR.