 Noontide, Howard Wigg, Code Green, Think Tech, Hawaii on the last day of February 2022. And what could be more fascinating than materials science? Actually, if we don't affiliate Hawaii with materials science much, that's something for the huge universities, except materials science is coming to a university near us very soon. As a matter of fact, it's already here. And to talk about this is Prismic Dera, Ph.D. Goodwin Sierra, Ph.D. Fei Furutomo, Ph.D. We almost have an academic. I'm out of speakers here today. And before I let them launch and launch, they will want to point out that material science, as I see it, can relate directly to energy efficiency in Hawaii, because in my mind, as you developed new materials, say for building components or for machinery, you are putting in, generally speaking, less energy into that component. And lo and behold, we might even be able to manufacture some of them here in Hawaii. This is down the road, creating some very, very nice paying jobs and contributing to Hawaii as a science center. So on that very cheery note, we got lots. Oh, no, Dera Prismic, why don't you introduce the specialties of yourself and your guests, and then we will launch away into the real material here. Take it away, Prismic. Sounds very good. Aloha Howard. And thank you so much for inviting us for this interview. We are all very excited to share the news about this project and talk to you a little bit about the topic of material science. My name is Prismic Dera. I'm a professor of mineral physics and material science at the University of Hawaii. And my colleagues are Godwin Severa. Godwin is a chemist by a training. He works at the Hawaii Institute of Hawaii Natural Energy Institute and phase our educational and online content specialist who develops wonderful tools for students to participate in our projects. So I think if it's okay with you, Godwin is the principal investigator of this project and I think he would be happy to explain the concept and framework of this new initiative at UH. And then, Godwin, when you need a slide, just say next slide, please. Okay. Yeah, thank you, Howard. So I think we should move to the first slide. So today, I will take you a bit on a drive. So the University of Hawaii is an interest in developing material science here. And this interest began when the Vice Chancellor of Research funded an internal grant on a material science research and education consortium, which put together about 15 faculty to collaborate within the university whilst providing undergraduate students research facilities. So besides that consortium, the university is also invested in two buildings for interdisciplinary collaborative research. And we also have state-of-the-art x-ray diffraction facility as well that Dr. Dara runs as well as a microscopy facility here at the School of Ocean and Science and Technology. So really, this project that we are talking to you about today really started from that. That collaboration that brought us all together is material scientists to think further. And the reason why we decided to partner with the University of Washington, I know the University of Washington is very close to us and geographically. And we also have a lot of students that go to the University of Washington from Hawaii. But the most important thing was the synergy that we have with the University of Washington in terms of instrumentation, in terms of the research that we do. And for instance, the University of Washington program that we partnered with is called MEMSY. It's a big center that's been funded by NSF materials research science engineering center. And this center that's at the University of Washington is about 26 faculty. It's a big research initiative focused on material science. And they have about 30 graduate students and 500 graduate students. These were the numbers by the end of 2020. So we could really learn a lot by partnering with this center. Because besides the synergy that we have in materials, we could also learn about how to run our own center here at the University of Hawaii. We are at one university. So we really have the facilities and the expertise to perform high quality and quantifiable research at the highest level. So we are hoping that through this foundational grant that we have in partnership with the University of Washington, we'll be able to have our own big material science initiative that we have more and more research at the University of Hawaii that can be able to also partner with the industry to create new materials that are more relevant to the needs of Hawaii. So I'll take you a little bit. I'll get more into what this grant is about. So our project or grant is focused on a research and education in material science. But the biggest component of it or the key part of it is to involve underrepresented minorities in science or in material science. And our focus here at the University of Hawaii right now on this grant is to have more women come into material science, have more native Hawaiians participate in material science, have more Pacific Islanders participate in material science. We want to build the next workforce relevant for material science here in Hawaii. And we can only do that by ensuring that the students here in Hawaii that wants to stay here in Hawaii gain the skills that are necessary to follow this career pathway. So our vision really is to increase participation by represented groups through creating a pathway that recruits and retains these participants because it's not just enough to bring them into our projects or consortium to do research. We also want to make sure that the students that do research with us ends up graduating and some of them ends up going to graduate school in places like University of Washington. So we have a framework that we have established that ensures this would happen. So I will say this in short, in the interest of time. So one of the things, the key thing is to have the students perform laboratory research and being mentored by researchers like Dr. Shemik Dera and researchers at University of Washington. So they get dual mentoring. So not only are they benefiting from the researchers here at University of Hawaii, they're also getting mentored by University of Washington researchers. And the other key thing that we have is that the students that are part of this program will go to University of Washington to perform their research in summer. So they get also hands-on experience at this big research center that the University of Washington has. It's a really world-class material science research center. And besides that, we are also developing curriculums in collaboration with the University of Washington. What I mean by that is we are developing core teaching materials. Because here at University of Hawaii, we are beginning, we are ending the throes of trying to develop material science. So we can learn a lot by leveraging the things that University of Washington has already established. Why learn from your own mistakes when you can learn from the mistakes that others already made and they've perfected the process? So there's a lot of things that we can learn from University of Washington in terms of having newer classes for material science that we can teach here. Like right now, we're starting in fall. We are going to be teaching a material science class. Thus, they have been developed through this research grant. And we are also a research and education grant. And we are also trying to make sure that the students that are part of this program can have pre-admittance to the University of Washington programs if they so decide to go to do graduate school there. Because the professors would already know them. And in most of the times when you go to graduate school, it's through the relationships that you develop with the graduate professors. So if they already know you and you already have shown you the minimum requirements for the University, it makes it easy for you to get admitted as a student. So we are trying to move most of the drawbacks that are underrepresented students face. In terms of GRIS scores, we are trying to make sure that can be waived. Because some of the students don't have the money to pay for the GRIS scores. So if they've already published a paper with some authors in our consortium, then that could substitute for those GRIS scores. So these are some of the things that we are trying to work out. But I think, Dr. Derra will probably talk more about the research component. I think at this point I would like to move on to him. So, Godwin, we talk in this office about workforce development. Sounds like you people are all about student force development. And they will eventually, when they graduate, become part of a highly educated and well-paid workforce. Anything specific to Hawaii? Or is this still a very general course? And then the graduates will move on to Washington. Any Hawaii-specific components that you've thought about yet? And maybe that's a question for Faye. You're on mute, Faye. Actually, I think Dr. Derra will talk about some of the research that's specific to Hawaii. And I think that will help answer that question. Okay, I can try. So let me, if we could show slide number four. I think Godwin has provided a very nice introduction to this specific collaboration that we wanted to present to you that focuses on material science. So just to define what material science is, because it's a term used in academic environment at universities. And then normal people probably don't know specifically what it means. So material science is a science of smart materials, better materials that perform in technological environments in industry, in our homes, better. If you look at your cell phone and compare how cell phones look 20 years ago or 15 years ago, they are much smaller, much smarter. They have much more memory, much faster. So all of this comes because materials of which the phones are made are better. We learn how these materials work, how they are built on atomic scales, how atoms are connected and what it means in terms of electrical conductivity and being able to transmit Wi-Fi signal and so on. And based on this knowledge, we try to design, engineer new materials that perform better. So this slide shows, slide number four shows this tetrahedron four components of material science, where we try to link the structure of a material, the chemical composition bonding and so on, with properties, with how it behaves in certain conditions in response to certain stimuli, with performance, so how well a device using this material would work, and with processing, how we can change this material, form it to whatever form it needs to assume in our device. So this is kind of what we have in mind. It's material science is a very multidisciplinary field. It requires ability to characterize samples of many different forms to synthesize them, synthesize with modifications once you know what makes it perform better, and then test in real applications. Could we go to slide number five, please? So we are starting small with this project. We selected four examples of scientific challenges that we think all link to Hawaiian economy in some way. We work on photovoltaics, materials for improved solar panels. We work on materials for hydrogen storage that could be used in fuel cell cars. We work on materials where structural defects imperfections can improve performance, for example, in electronics applications. That's pretty much the portfolio. The one example which I have in this illustration is an example of ionic liquids. This is a collaboration that we developed together over the last couple of years. So ionic liquids is a special class of chemicals where you mix several components, all of which process ionic charge or electrical charge. Because of this structure, because of this makeup, these materials have very special properties. They are selective absorbers, which means that if you want to remove some poisonous component from an environment, some contaminant, you can use these as biodegradable, biosafe absorbers. If you had some gas that you wanted to remove from a chimney of a factory that produces contamination of atmosphere, you could use these materials. There's many, many other applications. They're used in batteries as improved electrolytes and so on. This is a class of these smart materials, modern materials that have multiple applications, and improving them, setting some goals in terms of how we want to make them perform better, what we want to achieve, allows us to apply this in the framework of this materials, design, and optimization. Can we go to the next slide, please? So this kind of shows you this feedback loop that we are trying to create. So we have people who specialize in synthesizing these materials, and Godwin is here, the father of ionic liquids at the University of Hawaii, who can take materials that we know already perform well. We try to synthesize these materials in a form that allows us to perform this very exact structural characterization and understand how these chemical and physical properties that control the performance, how they work. We use computer modeling, and this is something that University of Washington is helping us with. They have a very well-established center that performs modeling of material, structure, and properties. And we take all of this information together, make a new synthetic recipe, and hopefully come up with a much improved ionic liquid that will be 10 times more selective or 10 times better performing in some other way. So again, we try to apply this general framework, general flow of information to multiple projects that we hope all are relevant to Hawaii's future, mostly in energy sector. So this would be, again, photovoltaics, hydrogen storage, and cleaning up the environment. We live on this beautiful small island that doesn't have too many natural resources, but I think there are these ways in which we can be smart about utilizing what we have, being clean about our existence, not poison the environment, and just develop an environment in which other people living in other places would want to come here and conduct their business, perhaps a small-scale manufacturing. And does that call for a segue to say that? Yes. So all of this is dependent on our ability to train the future workforce that would be able to carry this out. We are teachers at the university. We do some research in our labs, but this would need to really be done in small business or by people that we train who advance to work in industrial aesthetics. Yeah, so can we bring up that slide that had the yellow triangle earlier? There you go. Thanks so much. So I wanted to kind of clarify and then just maybe strengthen, reiterate what Godwin was sharing about earlier about our educational component of this project. And so our big goal and what the big goal that UH is to actually develop a material science pathway for students to be able to go and get their degree and then go on to grad school here at UH or at UW or other places in order to pursue career. But right now we have the funding to be able to start our recruitment and retention efforts toward that end. And so in terms of recruitment, you know, because material science is not as well known in Hawaii, we want to raise awareness, first of all, generally in our community, but particularly with the audiences that Godwin mentioned. So that would be Pacific Islanders, Native Hawaiians, and women. And then, of course, K-12 students. Those will be the students that are coming into the university in a few years. So we're working with the University of Hawaii, various campus organizations to get the word out. We're working with Kamehameha Schools in order to reach more Native Hawaiian high school students. And then in our retention, we're really focusing on mentoring and exchange. And so I want to go to the next slide and talk about that. And that one is about our research experience. And so the kind of our big effort with this grant is to create these paid undergraduate research experiences for students. And so we designed it around this acronym more, M-O-R-E. And that's really about giving students more from their UH experience, expanding them beyond their discipline because and because material science is so interdisciplinary. And also giving them the experience outside of even our university by working with University of Washington. So we start with M, which is mentoring. And that's really about our students working directly with the faculty. And really having the faculty help them achieve their goals and pursue their interests. And then, Ohana. So as God would mention, there are these students, there are these faculty that have been working together for years now, and have really tried to build this pathway and also advanced material science in Hawaii. And so, you know, I'm relatively new to this group and and being a non-laboratory science person being from the education field, it's been, you know, a little interesting for me to get involved. I don't always know what they're talking about, but I have to say everyone's been really welcoming, approachable down to earth. They really are very passionate about student success and about the science. And so, you know, you'll be definitely in good hands if you know of students or folks who want to get involved in this project. And then students are also going to be able to be involved with their own student cohorts, so to get to know students from other disciplines or other parts of the university. And then our research experience. So that again is this paid undergraduate research experience, 10 to 20 hours a week in the lab, working with state-of-the-art equipment, working on these research projects that the UH and UW faculty have been starting to work on together. And so it's really a great way to, for our two universities to build synergy and then to get the students involved and then give them these various, you know, life experiences and research experiences. And then lastly, the exchange E. And this is really a chance for students to, you know, be able to not just meet faculty from another university and students from another university, but to even possibly work in their labs, go there, you know, and that's just a really big opportunity for some of these students who may have been born and raised here and not haven't had the chance to work outside of Pawa'i. So we're really excited about this opportunity. Next slide. So the thing that I wanted to share about NEXT is actually our students because, you know, I wanted to show folks how diverse these students are and how exciting their goals and aspirations are in being able to, and how this project helps meet those goals. So our first student is Emily. She's from Colorado and she is studying biological sciences. She actually joined this program because she wants the one day get her master's in either biological or environmental conservation and she, one day, hopes to be a Nat Geo explorer. So, you know, really interesting young lady. We have Isabel who's originally from Pawa'i and she's from mechanical engineering and she's passionate about sustainability. So this project helps her really fulfill a part of her passion being at UH. We have Tracy who's our chemistry major from Honolulu and she is interested in one day doing her own research and conducting her own research. And so she really sees this opportunity as a way to learn more about, you know, how to run a lab, how to gain better communication skills, how to be more self-directed. So she's interested in not only the lab skills but some of the life skills as well. And then we have Shelby who is our math major and she's a former UH dance team member who took a class in solid date physics and it just opened her world to material sciences. She has started working in a lab previous to this on developing carbon nanofoam and now she wants to learn about inorganic materials and work with Dr. Guerra. So, you know, these students are coming in with all different life experiences and goals and I hope that, you know, they'll be able to really achieve and get more out of their UH experience using, you know, going through this program. And so if you folks out there know of students who would be a good fit for this program, particularly if they're, you know, from Native Hawaiian Pacific Islander or for women, please send them our way. And we have a website to check out and our address is go.hawaii.edu slash capital D, capital X, or capital Y, capital P. So please go and check that out. Wow. Wow, inspiring stuff, Faye. You know, UH is generally has, it has strengths, tropical agriculture, astronomy, marine life, ocean sciences, and of course, NREL, but you are opening up a whole new prospect here and you guys are, you each have your own unique talents and Lord knows what good stuff is going to come out of this. We've just got a few more minutes, one or two. Who wants to say a last word of wisdom here? This, this is really inspiring stuff. Thank you, Presmech, for bringing these two wonderful people together here. So if I could just say a few words. I think you're very right. For us working at the university is an extremely rewarding job. It's like doing your hobby every day for, you know, for, to support your life and working with students is something that is at the heart of everybody employed by a university. So trying to create some, some positive pathway for, for these students in the future so they could, you know, find new work settings, new job opportunities and learn something that will help them shape their futures. I think that's, that's really something that we strive to do. And I think it would be important to thank people who are part of this collaboration, but weren't able to, to be with us here. So people who run this material science center at the University of Washington, the director, David Gamelin and the associate director, Xiaosong Li, they were extremely helpful in helping, you know, making us able to put together this funding proposal and getting the money. And then our colleagues who couldn't join us today for the interview and are also faculty members of this project, Hope Ishii and Niko Goyard and Joe Brown. The guard wouldn't say any last, last minutes or moments of wisdom here. Oh yeah, you know, it certainly can be said at all, but I would like to thank the worst, you know, thank you Howard for, you know, making a, you know, for allowing us to come to our show and talk to you about this opportunity that, that we have and probably I'm sure in the future, you know, I talked to Dr. Dara earlier, we might, you know, try to bring the students that are part of this program. This project has only been six months old so far, so probably within the next six months we'll try to bring them and they can talk about the research that they do. Yeah yeah and this program is archived, it'll be probably archived late this afternoon and I put in key words like material science so people, if they do material science away, boom, this program is going to come up and don't be surprised if you get some inquiries down the road. And on that very, very, very cheery note I thank President Godwin and Faye, this is a very inspiring program. This is Howard Wigg, Cold Green, Think Tech, Hawaii, February 28th, 2022. Thank you very much for all your inspiration and we'll see you next time.