Mr. Jake Joshua C. Garces is an Associate Professor V and the current Director of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD), Expanded Tertiary Education Equivalency and Accreditation Program (ETEEAP), and Ladderized Education Program (LEP) at Cebu Normal University (CNU). He is also a full-time faculty member in the Biology Department of the University’s College of Computing, Artificial Intelligence, and Sciences. He earned a Bachelor of Science in Biology (cum laude) from CNU in 2013 and a Master of Science in Environmental Studies from the University of the Philippines Cebu in 2017. He was the former Research Chair of the College of Arts and Sciences (2022-2023), Chair of the Biology Department, College of Arts and Sciences (from 2021 to 2022) and the Division Chair of the Research Institute for Tropical Biology and Pharmaceutical Biotechnology (RITBPB) of CNU (from 2018 to 2020). In addition, he is teaching various courses in the Master of Environmental Biology program such as Analysis of Population, Environmental Contaminants, Human Evolution, Research in Environmental Biology, and Environmental Field Study. His primary research interests are Biological Invasions, Invasive Alien Species (IAS), and Biosecurity, as well as Urban Biodiversity and Ecology. His research focuses on the biological, ecological, and economic effects of IAS, as well as the biology and ecology of biological invasion and management strategies for introduced species in rural and urban environments. He has published peer-reviewed articles indexed in ASEAN Citation Index (ACI), Clarivate Analytics, and Scopus, as well as a book chapter titled “Philippine Plants in the Last 500 Years: Ethnobotany and Socio-cultural Significance” that was originally written in Spanish and then translated into English.