 The science fair, you know about the science fair. It's been in Hawaii since, oh my gosh, way before statehood, I think. And Wayne Kamataki, he has been with the science fair since the American Revolution. Some people can't remember today, but we know. Wayne is a businessman, he's the chair of the Hawaii Academy of Science, a very important organization which presents the science fair, Hawaii State Science Fair every year in the spring. And Wayne's been doing it. I'm not kidding, for a long time. Wayne, welcome to the show. Thank you very much. And again, I want to just thank you for thinking Hawaii, giving us the opportunity and just allowing us to communicate who we are and share with what's going on in the Hawaii Academy of Science and our Hawaii State Science Fair. So thank you for the opportunity. That's an amazing organization. It was created around the same time that the university was created in 1910 or 12, oh, maybe a little later, but within that period. And for a long time, it was the go-to place for all the scientists or would-be scientists in the state. And then at some point it decided, hey, we got to get the kids involved and we have to have competitive projects and awards and we have to bring them in from all the islands and we have to sell science. And you've been doing that for decades and these kids really, they take the point and some of these kids have won national competitions. They, as a result, they've gone to national schools in science on the mainland and become very successful. A lot of them have been very successful right here and some of them have done remarkable things in the world of science on the mainland. So this is an organization that activates kids, it activates their interest in science and what could be better for Hawaii? I understand your motivation. I don't have to ask you why you do this way, but I will anyway. Why do you do this way? Yeah, you know, science fair, you know, one, I was a science fair kid back in the 1960s in middle school. I remember doing my project, but it's more with both of my sons having gone through science fair and especially my younger one, he was a science fair geek. And as you say, you know, it created an opportunity for him to go on to college and he is a science researcher today. He's a genetic researcher as a result. And for me, I told myself the opportunity that the Hawaii state science fair gave my sons, you know, when my younger son left off to college, I promised myself I would spend whatever time effort and dedicate myself to reaching out and finding as many kids as possible and giving them this opportunity of doing a science project, understanding problem solving, the critical thinking process and more especially gaining confidence in themselves of being able to communicate. What I learned with science fair and science fair kids, more than just science itself, it teaches a child or a student how to take a look at a problem, how to analyze a problem, how to try and solve the problem and more so the ability to have to communicate it when they have to communicate to judges and among their peer, it gives them a certain self-confidence in decision-making. And that decision-making process, whether they become a scientist or not, becomes an invaluable discipline in life. That's been my experience. And so our goal is to reach out and bring as many kids as possible into that fold through science fair. I wanna talk about that. First of all, the kids that choose the topics, they choose the nature of the project, which requires a certain amount of creative thinking and they have the liberty to do that thinking. And then of course the kids, they learn about scientific methodology, they learn about doing data gathering, they learn about taking it to the next step, making it relevant. It's really remarkable when you talk to them, you get excited listening. But finally, and you touched on this, finally, science cannot be in a bottle anymore. Science has to be defended, it has to be presented to the community. We see that in the national issues around presenting COVID to the community. People have to know about science. We live in a complex world, science cannot be separated from public opinion. People in general have to be educated about science. And therefore the burden of the scientist and of anyone involved in science projects has to include learning how to speak of it, speak of it. And when you go around, this is before COVID, when you go around to these various project booths and posters in the science fair, 700 of them, as I last recall, in the conventions, there are 700 teams of kids that are quite amazing. It makes your blood run and they will stand there and immediately you ask them, what's your project about? And bang, you get the answer. Is it this kid is like, what, 12, 13, 14 years? He's going to tell you right now what his project is about and stand back because you're going to get all of it. And this is remarkable because kids that age, they don't know how to talk to strangers. And yet the science fair teaches them that. And it's a skill they use all of their lives. As you say, in science or out of science, but I think, and scientists will tell you, studying science, working in science, researching in science now is different because you have to explain and defend your project, your work, your research to the public. You can't be a wallflower. And that's what the science fair teaches you. Yeah, and beyond that, what I love about it is, and really I equate this, it's an academic sports to kids. It's those kids that maybe do not participate in regular physical sports, but have the competitive spirit in them. Here's an arena that they get to compete. And when you watch the students, I call them kids, but the students, when they enter into the science fair, they meet a common-minded person who's in that same space and they become very competitive. But at the same time, they share with each other what they're doing, where they are and how they're doing. And you'd be surprised they stand contact over the years. And in the case of my younger son, to this day, a lot of the science fair kids that he met, he's still friends with, this is now 15, 10, 12 years later. But it's that opportunity of just communicating and meeting like-minded people and following up with each other over the years. There's so many aspects of science fair beyond what people see in just that one event itself. Oh yeah, it's really wonderful to be around it. So let's talk about how a kid in... May I use that term just for comfort? How a kid... I mean, these kids range from what? Junior high school to high school. How a kid gets into the science fair. I imagine it's connected with the DOE. It happens with a science teacher in a school. Can you talk about how a kid gets involved? Yeah, the process has been... I think to this day they still maintain it with both my sons, it started in seventh grade science. And it's seventh or eighth grade science. Generally, it's I think seventh or eighth grade. The teacher creates... Part of the curriculum is every student doing a mandatory science project. And so the student then has to go home, think of a project and put that whole thing together, but it is part of the curriculum. And so that starts a student into this whole process of science fair, the school science fair. And for us, we're eternally grateful for DOE to providing that fertile bed of bringing that student in into that first science fair project. And from there, based on that student's interest and success, in suing years, they pursued on their own. And so we have that handful of... Not more than a handful. I think for us, pre-COVID, we had over 2,000 students participating, starting from school level into science fair. We had 1,500 in the first year of COVID. And we're down now in a lower number in 1,000 plus I think 1,200, but still it's a significant number of students here independently continuing science projects. Well, that's true. They start out at whatever grades, seventh grade, for example, and then the next year, they're back and the year after that, they're back. And sometimes their projects continue for more than a year. Sometimes they change horses and take on a new project. And I guess the point is they get committed. My sense of it is that most of them get committed to science. You know, we used to walk around with cameras so we could do OC16 shows on the science fair. It was a joy to do it because the truth is, you're walking down the street and you see an interesting looking kid, student, or whatever the forum may be, you can't just walk up to him and talk to him. Doesn't work that way, not in our society. But when you're in the science fair and you got a camera, you can walk up to him and he's gonna talk to you. You have a relationship, you know, and you're putting it on film, you know, it benefits him, the fair, the state, you know, think tech, all that. So it's great to talk to him. And one of the first questions I would ask these kids when we did this walk around the convention center are you committed to an education in science and potentially a life in science? Not 100% said yes, but like 75% said yes, and they actually do that. So you are changing lives, Wayne. Yes, it does open that window and opportunity and you're right. You know, when you watch a young student, especially as they enter into middle school, they still have no idea where they are, what they're doing or what that space is. But as they get into science fair and again, they meet like-minded students who are in the same space as them, two things happen, that competitive spirit rises up and second, that camaraderie. But once they get involved in it, that interest then grows and you'd be surprised, again, exactly as you're saying, the interest just grows over the years and you watch that student go on through high school and invariably they'll go on into college and we'll start in a science career, a science related career because of science fair. That's the opportunity, I think, for me, I love the idea of participating and seeing it. The word I use always is turn the light bulb on in a student's mind. So you are right. That's a secondary effect too though. Yeah. You know, the kid goes home and the kid talks to his parents, he tells his parents he's got a science project and maybe he needs their help or at least to listen to him while he presents the project. So all of a sudden, the parents are involved and they're committed and they're telling the kid, hey, this is a good thing. You know, why don't you plan to study science and you get this kind of reverberations bubble in the family and it brings the family together. I've seen that. Don't you think this happens? Yeah. Yes, yes, I agree, I agree. Again, it's something when young students don't think about and everybody looks at science as a subject and they either think I'm good or not good in science but they don't realize science is not just that subject in a textbook. It's a live experience of thinking about a problem, looking at the problem, figuring out how to go about testing out that idea or a solution to the problem and they get immersed in that process of, again, as I said, that critical thinking and they begin to gain some confidence. They say, you know, I thought of this problem. I thought of ideas to solve it. I can do that time and time again on other things and so it just opens that world and I agree it rolls over to the family because they're watching the student go through that science fair experience and watch that student test, you know, whatever they're doing, you know, the kitchen table becomes the laboratory in the house and the rest of the family gets to watch that and get interested and you are right, it does happen. And they say to themselves, hey, this kid can really do stuff. You know, he can do stuff that may affect the world and all of a sudden the parents have more confidence in the kid and the parents are expressing that to the kid. It's a wonderful process to watch it happen. So I wanna talk about the levels of competition. You've been referring to that. So you start off, say, I'm picking Hilo because Hilo seems to have more than his fair share of scientists. Yes, yes. So, okay, so you go from local to statewide to net, can you describe the competitive levels? Okay, yeah, good. And I also roll into the discussion on and I think you earlier asked the question, what happened during COVID to our program? But it starts at a school level and generally it starts as a classroom required project science in the science class at every public high school in the state. And from there, they have a school competition. They have a judging at the school level. The winners that get selected move on to the district level which are districts on the island. You have the East Hawaii district, West Hawaii district on this island and they participated at the district level. The ones that perform and do well and win at the district levels head on to the state level. And at the state level is really your 700 plus students all there competing to win awards. From the state level, there is that next level where those that win the state head on to ISAF, the International Science and Engineering Fair is held in different cities across the country every year in the month of May. And the students that are serious that is the granddaddy of competition of participating and again, the competitive side participating, winning the states there and heading off to ISAF and seeing how well they can do. And over the years, Hawaii per capita again for how small of a state we are, our students surprisingly do well and have garnered awards I think in almost every year at ISAF. At ISAF you're talking about 70 countries. I think it was 1100, the times I've gone, 1100 projects world now you're dealing with a world competition. It's not a national competition, it's a world competition. And I think the students that attend that gain this all of out there across the world. There are students interested in science. People refer to them sometimes they're geeks but it's not geeks, it's they're the drive to want to learn and figure out things. And again, they meet people from around the world in that process. So when you follow that track, it's exciting to see a student starting that you first meet in middle school with their little science project and what they're doing and see them progress up through high school and end up at an ISAF competition. Yeah, and those relationships, those connections they make in the international are lifelong. So, you know, science is all about collaborating it's collaborating, you know, where you are it's collaborating where you aren't in every similar institution, every similar research project around the world. And you have all these partner and team articles and research projects going on among scientists and those relationships very likely start with this international connection in the science fair. It's really impressive. And the other thing I was going to mention is that this does not happen without the possibility of scholarships, huge, big, full-ride scholarships. You win the science fair, you are golden, am I right? Yes, yes. Even at state level, there are awards that are summer scholarships and some are awards to help them pay for their college. But as you get up into the international level, yeah, the awards are huge, including some four-year scholarships to certain universities, but it is a great opportunity. And again, you know, when you watch a student having them that drive us, you know, whether they can win it or not, they're going with the idea is I'm going to compete and I'm going to try and win at some level or gain that recognition. And when you watch that student and that whole spirit, for me, it's exciting to watch because it's not something you got to prod a student or you got to pull them or push them. I mean, once they see it, they go on their own. And as that spirit and that student, I love to see because you know, when they go after a career in life, whatever it is, they're going to pursue it with the same passion. Yeah. And you've had something to do with it. You actually gave them the opportunity to engage. That's a fabulous gratification, I think, yeah. Yeah, we just give them that soft start then. Yeah, it's gratifying to have the ability to be in that space. If you don't mind, I'll just touch a short base going back on, and I think the question on COVID. What happened in 2020, and we have shared this already. When COVID started, in the early 2020, the schools had their school and district fairs in person, and then things just shut down on the spot. Fortunately, Amy Weintraub, our director, was toying around with the idea of doing a virtual concept of allowing judges or other people to force to present so they can take a look at the project before the project. It wasn't with COVID in mind. When we got shut down within three weeks because she already was working in that space, she pivoted where we are from a no-science fair to a virtual science fair in 2020. And we're lucky, we had the help of Student Corner, which is a local-based company run by George Donner, who was already working in that space. And so within three weeks, we went from a shutdown of the in-person fair and we hosted a virtual fair and was very successful. And I think at that moment, we probably were one of the only states in the United States that held a science fair in 2020. We followed up with a full virtual fair in 2021. We're from school, district, and state. Everything was done virtually. International fair went virtual in 2020. I think they opened up a little bit in 21, but because of the concerns of COVID, we didn't push on and send the group to the international fair. I think they may have competed virtually. And where we are right now, we had hoped this year would open up to a full-on fair, but again, it's gonna be a virtual. I just wanna share one of the benefits of a virtual fair though, and it's interesting what we learned is it taught a student to do a presentation again on Zoom. And it also allowed us to bring judges on board that we could never, we could bring judges now all over the country or even other former alumni students served as judges, they're on the mainland and they could zoom in. And it taught a student of doing a presentation on camera and having a much broader group of judges that we could bring in a spot to judge the project much more than we were able to before. The second thing it did, and this is more for me also inspiring is a school like Lanai who never was able to participate because of the cost of sending a student from Lanai to Maui to participate in a district fair. All of a sudden, virtually, we had a project from Lanai. And what it did open was any student in any high school in Hawaii can now join and participate in a science fair virtually. So part of our field as we go forward, we wanna continue to keep that channel open now that we've developed it. But at the end of the day, I think there's nothing that can beat a live fair where the students are in that arena, face to face, see each other, have that competition but also get to meet other people that's gonna become lifelong friends to them. That's the piece that we're missing in a virtual fair that I love to see the day we return back to a live fair. Yeah, well, I mean, you were really in the right place as ThinkTech was, because we already knew about Zoom, we were using Zoom, but when COVID started, we realized that this was a tool that we could do greater outreach with than just as used. Same process, interesting. But you know, if I remember back to the way it was in the convention center and walking those long, long aisles there with these hundreds of projects and posters and demonstrations, and I mean, it was just like, it was Disneyland for me, I'll tell you the truth. Talking with them was pretty interesting, being there a few feet away from, you know, their posters and their demonstrations and watching the teams react. It's hard to do that on Zoom. So the question is, how do you do this with the same efficacy on Zoom as you used to do walking those aisles? Yes, you do lose that aura of that group and that feel of, you know, that competition within the group or just the communication within the group. That's the part that we have to get back to the live fair because that is as important a component as the event itself. And I think the students meeting, if you talk to science fair students in the past, they say, you know what? The part of the competition was just meeting other students and becoming friends with them and that we cannot let that go. The thing that Zoom did do though, when I look back at it, it allow a student to, again, you don't have that feel that you're talking about, but it still allowed a student to discipline themselves in doing a presentation on Zoom, having a question and answer of judges and being able to conduct themselves in a manner that if you watch, you know, part of this COVID, the whole business world is in Zoom right now and there's talk that it may stay in that mode for years to come. Well, all of a sudden here we have a student now being trained in that discipline. And so however the world is when they get out of college, they're gonna be able to participate both ways in an in-person office or in a Zoom meeting. They'll know how to conduct themselves through the training they've had in our science fair process. So I, again, as much as I love to go full face on, Zoom does help develop them with that discipline. Absolutely, because the world is being transformed as we speak, and that's certainly the direction. But talking about the hybrid, you mentioned the possibility of a hybrid. Now I can see, for example, you know, the in-person experience, because I was there many times. And I can see the Zoom, because we do Zoom, we're doing Zoom now. And you know, you can have a certain amount of rapport over Zoom, it's personal to some extent. But what I don't understand, and you can help me, is the hybrid where you have some students presenting by Zoom and other students presenting by in-person. For example, the kids on Linai, they're probably gonna wanna continue on Zoom because of the transportation burden and all that. But the kids who are here in Oahu, they're happy enough to do it in person, I guess if they wear masks and whatnot. How do you do hybrid, Wayne? Yes, I think in the hybrid, it would allow us, let's say a student Linai to participate in the Maui district fair without having to at the cost of attending. And so you can have both a live fair and some of the judging will be by Zoom to those students that cannot afford to attend. But if that student on, let's say Linai does well and wins a place, then that trip to Honolulu will be funded by either the Maui district or the state district in paying their fair. And then they'll be able to attend a live fair in Honolulu, the state fair. So it opens that channel to climb all the way up, short of coming to the state fair and being able to have that chance to get to the state fair without the cost of traveling. And once you get to state fair, most of the students costs are paid. Are either paid by the district or by the Hawaii state science fair. So it just allows that opportunity for that student who prior to this wouldn't even have the chance to do it, to be able to walk in and be there at the state fair. The state fair and all likely will try and get as much of it in person across the board. But again, I see an opportunity if a student cannot for some reason or circumstances, we are able to chime them in and have them compete with everyone else. And you can ask the judges to treat that with a certain amount of equality so that you don't give an advantage for somebody in one mode or another mode. You treat them all the same, essentially. By the way, when is the fair this year? March, April, when is it coming? It's, I'm sorry, I don't know the exact dates, but it's in April, I think. Unfortunately, I don't have the dates on here. Wayne, Wayne, I'm happy to hear you say that because that means we have to have another show as we get closer. You can give us an update within a few weeks of that show and we can talk about some of the specific projects that are in the pipeline. The other thing you mentioned that I wanna pursue is the thing about the judges. I was always really impressed with the community of judges that you guys managed to bring in. And most of them were local because it's hard to get somebody to fly from Cincinnati to Hawaii to be a judge. But what is the burden of a judge? What does a judge do? How does a judge play in all of this? And who are they? Yeah, judges come from all different areas, if in all of the sciences, but also our reach out now is to other teachers and in the case of former science fair students, the alumni, they step in and participate as judges. And our idea is, you want kind of a diverse group of judges to review a student's project and it doesn't have to be always the intelligent science person asking the question. You want also the question to come from a lay person saying, how did you exactly get that? Or why were you doing it? Because you want the student to be able to explain at all cross sections of the population. And so the judges, we open and recruit anyone who wants to become a judge to participate and share their time. The key is really the person's, the judge's time in spending. One of the things with Zoom we liked about it too, you can line up and the judge can line up their time on that judging. They don't have to dress up and drive all the way down in a face-to-face session. And also we can schedule it over time. So there's pluses and minuses, but again, back to your comment. I love, we love to see the judges there in person talking to the students in person and having the other students watch that interaction. It's a great learning experience for all. Yeah, because the other students be right next to them. They'd be watching this conversation. They would be learning from this conversation. They'd be impressed with it. So it all works well. But, you know, you mentioned, and this is really sort of seductive, you mentioned that, you know, in the time of COVID you can get judges from anywhere in the world by Zoom, just the way we get hosts and guests on Think Tech from anywhere in the world. It's a blessing. And so, you know, you could, you could touch the most advanced research institutions anywhere, the most prestigious ones. And I know they'll respond. I know that Urvami and Weintraub writes to them and says, hey, how would you like to be a judge in the Hawaii State Science Fair? They will all say yes. I mean, you have a ripe pomegranate here. And if you do it, you know, if you do it that way you'll have the benefit of this global supply of judges, really. So you can't give that up. So what I'm saying is I think you have to have that hybrid too going forward. But how do you have, hard question, how do you have hybrid judges? Yeah, yeah, no. And we've yet to flesh it out. We use the word hybrid going in the future it is gonna be a combination of some kind. The exact dynamics in our work we still don't know. And as you're talking, I'll share, you know, it also opens a door for students in one state or another state or interstate to collaborate and work together on a science project. They don't have to be only in their school or on their island. It just opens up lots of windows on what we yet know about or to be able to do. But it does make us relish the idea you're just opening this opportunity and we're gonna run with that going forward. Yeah, so my guess is that you're gonna go or try to go hybrid in 2023, you know, the spring a year from now. And that hybrid you're gonna invent it and it's gonna be very outreach. It's gonna be very national and global in so many ways. You have your work cut out for you actually, right? Yes, yes, yes we do. But you know, and if you look at our organization it's a handful of board member volunteers. The organization itself is a very lean group and we give a lot of credit to Amy Weintraub. I mean, she's the brains behind it and she's the one reaching out and looking at that future and trying to think out loud and presenting it back to the board. We have a very supportive board that asks her, yes Amy go out and reach out but I gotta give her a lot of credit. She's the one that's been thinking about and even this concept of hybrid and what she's looking at the next term. It really will come from her creativity. And again, she's asking out in the community as well but even for me I would love back to your question I would love to see what that hybrid is actually when we get there but it is gonna have my 100% support. Yeah, great. One last question and that's this. You know, we talk about diversification and there are many people in the legislature who'd like to see it. We've been talking about it however since John Burns and we really need to get on with it and diversification is really a euphemism for let's get into tech and science. That's what it really means. And the question I put to you is how does the science fair feed into that? How does it relate to that? How does it contribute to the possibility of diversification and by that, I mean science and technology as a career possibility right here? Yeah, I think what it does open the opportunity and again, as you say, each student will pursue an area of interest and one might be climate change, one might be how to grow seaweed or plants for consumption. And again, there's so many avenues and what it allows when you open a door of science fair, you're gonna have 700 different projects behind a student's passion. And those will then leverage into hopefully actual activity and some of those students will follow up on their own and actually take it as a direction. But it creates it up for me, it creates that initial opportunity of looking at this in a very diversified manner behind the thinking of a diversified group of kids and all the students come from very different thought processes but that's what I love about it. It's not down a certain channel where everybody focuses on this one subject. It allows them to bring on board what passion they have and let's see if we can take it and some will I think eventually emerge to become the diversification of our state. You bet, absolutely. So this is really important in that context. So we're about out of time Wayne, can you give us a place where we can learn more about the Hawaii Academy of Science and Science Fair? Yes. And again, back to me, I don't have the exact site but if you go to Hawaii Academy of Science on Google, it'll take you to our site. And within our site there's, I think what we're trying to do is load in the virtual information on the virtual fair and we have some information on some of the projects that were presented virtually but it's go to the Hawaii Academy of Science site on Google and it'll take you to our website and have them explore from there. Yeah, and the thing about it is that, if you see this and you enjoy it and you enjoy what these kids are doing, you can be a Mr. Science yourself. You can feel that science is really interesting and we have to find out what's going on. And so it affects the public opinion and therefore public policy about accepting science in our lives in general. Thank you so much, Wayne Kamitaki. It's a good thing we rehearsed this show word for word, eh? Yeah. We did a good job doing it, right, Jay? Yeah, you too. Thank you very much for the opportunity. I appreciate your taking the time and allowing us to be part of your show. So thank you very much. Let's do it again. Wayne Kamitaki, the chair of the Hawaii Academy of Science. Thank you so much. Yeah, thank you, Jay.