Dr. Maria Corazon Abogado De Ungria is a molecular biologist and forensic specialist from the Philippines. She is best known for her work in promoting the use of forensic DNA technology in child sexual assault cases to protect the rights of women and children in the Philippine criminal justice system as well as her work in drafting the Supreme Court-promulgated Rule on DNA Evidence. ^[0]De Ungria completed her undergraduate studies at Macquarie University and received her PhD. in Microbiology at the University of New South Wales in Australia. She has been the head of the DNA Analysis Laboratory of the Natural Sciences Research Institute at the University of the Philippines since 1999 and is also currently the Director of the Program on Forensics and Ethnicity at the Philippine Genome Center. In 2012, she co-founded the Innocence Project Philippines Network that helps inmates in different Philippine penal colonies that claim to have been wrongfully convicted. ^[-1]

De Ungria was born in Manila on September 6, 1968 to Remigio Calma De Ungria and Segundina Molina Abogado. ^[2]At age 12, she signed a government scholar contract with the Philippine Science High School to help pursue her passion for science in college. ^[3]She was introduced to the field of molecular biology through her initial work on the plasmid biology of Helicobacter spp. in animal models of infection during her dissertation. Dr. De Ungria's personal motivation for returning to the Philippines to work as a research scientist was to encourage young students to pursue research careers and to "add to the relatively few scientists that are engaged in active research in the Philippines"^[4]

After finishing her PhD. in microbiology in 1999, Dr. De Ungria returned to the Philippines to head the DNA Analysis Laboratory of the University of the Philippines Natural Sciences Research Centre.

She focused on two major areas of study: the validation of molecular procedures for applications and the expansion of Philippine population databases to better understand the diversity of different Philippine groups.

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