Dr. Marissa Garcia Noel has long been quietly working to the benefit of the Philippine Chemistry Community. She has been a regular member of organizing committees of the Philippine Chemistry Congress and most notably, has been an indispensable and trusted organizer to whom industry partners and exhibitors flock. She efficiently headed the Ways and Means Committee of many local and international PCCs since 2001 while capitalizing on her reputation to influence industry people, raise funds and generate income for the PCC. Likewise, she also rendered similar services to the Natural Product Society of the Philippines (NPSP). She sat on the organizing committee of several NPSP National Conferences and was the lead local organizer/host of the December 2013 conference held at DLSU.
Dr. Noel is instrumental to the ratification of the Chemistry Law. Marissa, together with siblings Representative Victoria Isabel G. Noel and Former Representative Florencio Gabriel G. Noel, helped the Integrated Chemists of the Philippines (ICP) and the Philippine Federation of Chemistry Societies (PFCS) by liaising and lobbying for the Chemistry Profession Act in the Philippine Congress and Senate. After years of lobbying, dogged persistence and monitoring, the Chemistry Profession Act was signed into law by the Philippine President in 2015. The new Chemistry Law regulates, modernizes and protects the practice of the Chemistry profession in the Philippines.
She is the former Chair of the Chemistry Department of De La Salle University where some of her primary responsibilities include revising and offering new curricular programs, mentoring graduate and undergraduate students, promoting food chemistry research, mentoring and training new faculty members and helping organize the DLSU Food Institute and the food chemistry laboratory at the DLSU Science and Technology Complex in Laguna.
Throughout her professional career, Dr. Noel has been competently and quietly pushing for the cooperative amalgamation of the academe, the chemical industries and the policy-making sectors of the country for the advancement of chemistry.
Dr. Noel hails from Tacloban, Leyte. She obtained her BS Chemistry from the University of San Carlos and briefly taught at the Divine Word University. She did her MS in Food Science at the University of the Philippines at Los Baños and worked as a research assistant at the Southeast Asian Regional Center for Graduate Studies and Research in Agriculture (SEARCA) and the Institute of Food Science and Technology. She later joined De La Salle University, and finished her PhD at Ateneo de Manila University under Dr. Fabian Dayrit.