 Think Tech Hawaii. Civil engagement lives here. It's one o'clock on a Monday afternoon, so you must be watching Think Tech Hawaii research in Manoa. I'm your host Pete McGinnis-Marc. And every Monday at this time we bring you some exciting science results from the University of Hawaii at Manoa. But this time we've got something a little bit different. We have a former faculty member from HIGP who's going to tell us a bit more about his experiences out in the real world, not only in the real world of Honolulu, but also on the East Coast. So it's my very great pleasure to introduce my friend, Jonathan Grady. Jonathan is the president of Terror Systems Incorporated. So welcome, Jonathan. Welcome back to the islands, first of all. Well, thank you very much, Peter. Thank you for inviting me at Think Tech Hawaii. This is a great opportunity for me to come back and enjoy and see what's going on in Hawaii. Oh, it'll be lots of fun. Now, for context for our viewers, Jonathan, we had Milton Gases on the show two weeks ago. Milton is one of the faculty within the Institute who is developing applications associated with infrasound. And I was quizzing him a little bit about what exactly sort of the commercial aspects are. So can you sort of use that as a stepping stone? You were a faculty member, university. That's correct. You left around about the late 1980s. That's correct, but still in Hawaii. But still in Hawaii. So give the viewers a little bit of background for me. Okay. And in the context of Milton's activities, I was a faculty member doing basic research, NASA, and began to see opportunities of transitioning that research into through the private sector into the commercial environment. And so we were another faculty members looking at ways to get into the marketplace and how to take these rather arcane things that we were doing and find markets and opportunities that make some money. Okay. And I understand you're an astronomer. You even have an asteroid named... Oh, that's correct. I'm quite proud. Your original background is quite eclectic compared to being a president of a high tech company. That's correct. Although remember, Peter, that if you're a researcher, you're an entrepreneur just as well. So it's just an entrepreneur in a different area. But I started off as astronomy. That's correct. I was, you know, a young budding astronomer and worked my way up and eventually found myself in Hawaii using monache observatory. And I am quite humbled by the asteroid named after some of the research I did, but that's not the topic of this conversation. Right. No, but your background as an astronomer, we've had other people on the show talking about spectral analysis. Is that the sort of thing which you were doing? Remote sensing, which is trying to figure out what's all about that little dot in the sky that you can't resolve from all the spectral or color information that comes down or the thermal, the heat that comes off it or polarization, how you take your Polaroid sunglasses and see how it changes with polarization. All those remote sensing techniques. We've had Andrew Pagabrioli on the show a couple of times talking about using thermal infrared data to do gas studies in particular way, for example. Back in the eighties, presumably it was a little poor resolution, but basically it was the science of how do you use remote sensing to look at asteroids? That's got comets, satellites, anything in space. So how did that lead you to take the leap of faith to go into the private sector? Well, I think one of the most important things that happened at the time was the development of the small business innovation research program in the federal government. And that allowed researchers such as myself and many others across the country to find ways or have an avenue to take this technology such as Milton's Infrasound and turn it into a commercial product. And so there's a whole series of stages on it, but you have to do that in the private sector. You can't do that in the university environment. That was at the time. So that was the avenue that got me out of the university and into the private sector. But isn't that a different mindset instead of publishing papers, you're trying to make money? Well, yes. In fact, that's a very, very important point. And it was lost on me initially that, indeed, not everybody wants to use the science you're using in the kitchen or driving your car because we're trying to study asteroids and comets. And so it was a learning experience to transition from doing basic research for the sake of doing basic research to figuring out how do you turn that into a product that someone in California or Nepal or any place can use? And I will admit we were not all that successful. So what kind of things in some of the things we did trying to do? I mean, was this taking multispectral images or radar data? Right, right. Initially, with the Small Business Innovative Research Program, we focused on the government as the customer, the government was our marketplace. And then I transitioned out of that into looking at commercial real commercial activities. And that's where Terra Systems started here in Hawaii in about 1992. And that was, again, remote sensing, but using airborne systems to look down on the earth and take digital images and analyze those images to determine what's on the ground. Right. So I use satellite images of the Martian surface to figure out the composition of the Martian surface. You were doing this form of light aircraft looking down at the earth. And what kinds of things were you trying to study? Well, in fact, that's very important because a lot of it was very relevant to Hawaii. For example, and I'll give you one, just one example, was the problem of Myconia, which is still a chronic problem in the watershed on Maui and other places. And Myconia pops its head up through the leaves and then it grows and kills everything underneath. That just kind of thinking of it that way. And so we were using our digital imagery to find that Myconia so the work crews could come in, cut it down and get rid of it. So that's a practical application of the research that was done at the university that was transitioned out. And the approach of cameras had the color response or the spectral light. That's the kind of the secret in the sauce. And that's the expertise that comes out of the university and the education in the years working in the field of astronomy was being able to figure out which specific wavelengths of light, a color of light, some of them that we can't see, that make us see Myconia much more visible than it would have been otherwise. And you can apply that technique to many things. And on the mainland it was in agriculture, how are your potato crops doing or how is your pineapple crop doing? Right. So were all these projects then focused on Hawaii, like from Myconia or Maui, for example, or a show that the O'Hare rapid death that they're seeing on the big island with the O'Hare trees. Would that be the kind of project here or did you go global in your activity? In terms of from a science point of view, if I had just been a university researcher, I would stick rate in Hawaii because that's where the problem is and that's where the customer, so to speak. And I can enjoy learning new things about how to solve a particular problem. But from a commercial point of view, and this is the change in mindset, going from a scientist entrepreneur in the university to a, I'll call it a commercial entrepreneur trying to make money scaling your product up, we had to look at the customers in the agricultural, the mainland US all over the place, everything, the millions and millions of square miles, how can we solve problems in forestry or problems in agriculture elsewhere. And that is where the business comes in because you have to expand in that area. That was the big transition that occurred. Right, and now I believe you've been a person in the Accelerate UH Business Development Program. That came a little bit later than when you formed terror systems, but can you give us some perspective on how Accelerate UH approaches the problem? Yes. In fact, that's one of the, I think, the best programs around for scientist entrepreneurs. They need to get in there because it's a real quick learning experience that finding your market for your product that you think you want to put out and then reworking your product to really find out what the, to fit what the market needs and wants. And so many times, we as scientists think everybody is going to love our latest, greatest spectral curve analysis software or whatever, but in fact, what people really want are some color coatings on their cell phone. Right, but can you give us, for example, with Accelerate UH, what kind of thing did you really feel you benefited from most? Learning what I call the market driven analysis of your business plan. In other words, you can try to put together a business plan of how you're going to take your product, develop your product, take it to the market and all these various things, but you really need to go and look at your market first and do the footwork with the market to find out what do they really want, what do they want to buy, and is there competition out there? Is there some better product that solves the need you think you are? And in fact, that's what happened in one of my Accelerate UH projects was that we did the market research on a particular thing dealing with freshwater production that there were other products out there that fit the needs that the market wanted, not what we thought they needed, but what they really wanted. And that was, before we spent any money, that was great. Now it's a great technology, it's wonderful, but it didn't fit into the market. And I'll say right now, maybe in the future it might. I don't know. Okay. And it's not just you, but it's the whole company. And on this show, whenever I have a graduate student, I ask her, well, what are you trying to do career wise once you graduate from UH? And quite often, she'll say that basically, I want to go into industry, I want to be able to apply what I've learned. Have you seen that the kind of students which are coming out of UH, are they trained to be in the business community or in academia? You know, I really can't answer that question as well as I would like to, but my general wisdom is if your strength is science, do the science and then partner with a business person. Okay. If your strength is business, and you want to market science, find some scientists. We have the Shidler College of Business at the Manoa campus, for example. I don't know of many of the scientists at UH who are actually working one-on-one with that particular college. Is that where you would see potential for development? Absolutely. Absolutely. I'm just saying as having done it the hard way, okay, without the advantage of the state of Hawaii certainly helped with a lot of stuff. I don't want to think that just did it all alone, but the programs like the Accelerate UH, helping match scientists with business people and so that their strengths reinforce each other rather than going back to and get an MBA and then forget all your science. What were the main problems that you encountered, apart from lack of money or whatever it was, you know, poorly trained employees? No, no, no. Is that a naivete on the part of the scientists trying to be an entrepreneur? I got my PhD in Entrepreneurship and the commercial side of it, through the School of Hard Knocks. But it's like an adventure all the way. I mean, you have to take risk and whatever. And then in academia, I might be working on three to five projects simultaneously. Is that the way that the business community operates, or do you get a mega project for say the federal government or for an aerospace company and then focus entirely on that? I think that's the key thing, is if you're going to try to make money out of a marketplace with a product, then you need to focus on that product. So if you have a technology that you think you can turn into a product that the market's going to want, after you validate it with the market like Accelerate UH does, then you've got to focus on that, on that project, that one project. Otherwise, you just make one slip and you can lose all the investment. Yeah, but it must be really challenging to pick that one topic. Otherwise, you're going down a path that may not be productive. Yes. Yeah. See, and this is where Accelerate UH comes in, and this is the value of it, is that before you go down that pathway and invest a lot of money, you can validate the market beforehand. And through the Accelerate UH program, there are mentors and the business people that work with you to be the devil's advocate. And it ain't always nice to have somebody tell you that. Well, I know you've got a wide-ranging set of geographic experiences, Jonathan. So we're getting close to the end of the first half of the show. But when we come back, I want to probe you a bit more on the compulsive say between Hawaii and the larger world. So let me just remind the viewers, you are watching Think Tech Hawaii research in Manau. I'm your host, Pete McGinnis-Mark. And my guest today is Dr. Jonathan Grady, who is the President of Terror Systems Incorporated. And we'll be back in about a minute's time. See you then. Hello, everyone. I'm DeSoto Brown, the co-host of Human Humane Architecture, which is seen on Think Tech Hawaii every other Tuesday at 4 p.m. And with the show's host, Martin Desbang, we discuss architecture here in Hawaiian Islands and how it not only affects the way we live, but other aspects of our life, not only here in Hawaii, but internationally as well. So join us for Human Humane Architecture every other Tuesday at 4 p.m. on Think Tech Hawaii. Aloha. I'm Kili Ikeena and I'm here every other week on Mondays at 2 o'clock p.m. on Think Tech Hawaii's Hawaii Together. In Hawaii Together, we talk with some of the most fascinating people in the islands about working together, working together for a better economy, government and society. So I invite you into our conversation every other Monday at 2 p.m. on Think Tech Hawaii Broadcast Network. Join us for Hawaii Together. I'm Kili Ikeena. Aloha. And welcome back to Think Tech Hawaii Research in Manoa. I'm your host, Pete McGinnis-Mark. And my guest today is my very good friend, Jonathan Grady, who is the President of Terror Systems Incorporated. I should point out that Jonathan is here on vacation, so he's spending some of his beach time with me today. But more importantly, there's the third big storm about to hit his home state of Connecticut. So Jonathan, we can't let it pass that you have left Hawaii and that you are now based in Putnam, or Woodstock, Connecticut, where another blizzard is due to hit tonight. But can you sort of draw the comparison between business opportunities that we have here in Hawaii and what you've seen? Because Woodstock's pretty close to some high-powered universities as well. Yes, it is. Although it's out in the middle of nowhere, so to speak. Ten foot of snow. No. Where I live in Woodstock right now is near MIT, near Worcester Polytechnic, near the University of Connecticut, Yale University, Brown University, Connecticut College, and a variety of other University of Massachusetts and colleges in the area, which provide a very large academic environment of very varied and very deep. In fact, I've heard that it's not identical to, but it's comparable in some ways to Silicon Valley where you've got these real high-powered academic institutions which are drawing in industry. Must be very stimulating and different environment than Honolulu. Well, it's different and it's stimulating, but I don't want to diminish what happens here in Hawaii. Hawaii is a unique place as well and has a lot of advantages that places that get ten feet of snow don't. The area that you're referring to is Route 128 outside of Boston, which is a corridor of high-tech development and that's been the focus. But the other states, Rhode Island, the rest of Massachusetts and Connecticut, have in some sense felt left out of the high-tech development and so there are big efforts there, particularly in Rhode Island and Massachusetts and Connecticut, to bring entrepreneurialism out of the universities and into small businesses in the state of Connecticut. They tend to focus more on biomedical than they do on the technology that we do here. One of the main differences is just the numbers and the diversity of really expert people. We might have one or two experts in your field of spectral analysis here, which maybe there's 20 or 30. Or dozens and dozens of dozens. And so yes, there is that kind of competition, if you will, in an academic sense about what am I going to do? Can I go to an investor and really have that investor be interested in my project as opposed to some other project? There's a lot of competition there. But it has only been in the last, I'll say five years, particularly in Connecticut, that attention is paid to the entrepreneurs. Could you scale up, accelerate UH2 in the east coast environment? Or is it beneficial here in Hawaii simply because you get the one-on-one coaching? Oh, very much so. I would not say, oh, scale it up to the mainland. Okay, no. Scale it to Hawaii. Yeah. In fact, that goes back to this issue of focus. Don't try to be like the other guys because they're just successful or whatever. Be what works. And I think going back to Accelerate UH, that's what I think the value of it is, is that the people in the program really want entrepreneurs in Hawaii to succeed. So they tailor their program to what's going to work guys. Whereas the state of Connecticut right now, in their programs, and I don't want to diminish it, really focused on how can we get you to get a business going to make money so you pay taxes for the state of Connecticut? And that's kind of a rather impersonal approach. And I know you've also lived a little bit and worked for a while in San Diego. So can you compare and contrast Connecticut, California, Hawaii? Well, San Diego, again, wants to be like Silicon Valley and I am painting broad brushstrokes here, so I'm not the expert on it, but I spent three years there and the availability of money and opportunity is much greater than it is in Hawaii, but the competition is equally or even more so than it is in Hawaii. What I mean by competition is that you may have four or five engineering students vying for the same amount of money for their small project, but all having almost identical products. And that makes it kind of difficult for the entrepreneurs in that crowded field to win out. And those that do win out are the survivors and they tend to be go on and be successful. I would say that, contrasting it to Hawaii is that it's a little bit more of a benign environment and getting things going, but once you get going, then you can co-compete with the fellows and gals in San Diego, Silicon Valley, Route 28 or Research Park. Have you been able to stick to your routes in terms of just doing spectral analysis or the world's your oyster and you see other opportunities in other disciplines? Well, we like to think the world's our oyster as a scientist, right, and do everything. Many worlds. Yeah, right. But it focuses the key thing and to work on your strength. One of the reasons I was in San Diego is that there was a company we had here, SDI Medical Systems. We went over to San Diego and using remote sensing technologies, these spectral remote sensing and imaging technologies to make products to go into the medical field. And that is where we saw the best place to get in the market. Not giving away any trade secrets. Can you say any, you know, I understand that you're trying to find ways of early detection of cancer. That's right. How would that work? Well, a very innovative product, but that just like skin cancer, excuse me, you can notice that there's a changing color of the skin. And so in a conceptual way that you just take an imaging system, look at the skin or the epithelial or the area and then just figure out what's cancer, what isn't, how severe is it, and make the software and all that. Were you able to take that to market? Well, we took it to market. We developed a marketable product. Then I left the company and headed off to other parts unknown like Connecticut. And I don't know where that is right now. Oh, it's too bad. So any of our viewers who've got lots of money, Jonathan here is certainly one of the individuals. It sounds really, you really impact people's lives with this kind of research as opposed to finding asteroids. Well, that's true. But remember that the pathway going backwards starts with the basic research, started with the spectral research, developing the technologies, developing the instruments and opens up opportunities. This pathway, if I've got a graduate student and she's more interested in the industry path as opposed to academia, what kind of skill sets would business be looking for? When we had a business, the key thing is competence in your skills. In other words, if you're a good scientist, a good engineer, then you need to make sure you have your that's down pat. You will learn the peripheral things like business or what else you need along the way. And another key thing is writing skill to be able to communication is a key thing to be able to communicate what you're doing to others. It's interesting. We had Casey Hannibal on six months ago, and she wants to be an astronaut. And so we were going through what skill sets that she need in order to make astronaut training. Obviously, if you're going into business, it's not quite such a high flying career, but it's the same kinds of skills. Yes. Rather than looking at your publication list, its communications, its competency, STEM programs, science, engineering, math, is that also true for your line of work? Very much so. In fact, the STEM programs, I just want to say that where I grew up, this is 50 years ago, we had no STEM program, but we did have the space race, and that was a big driving force for technology education. But the STEM programs were non-existent. They are here now today, and they are probably the most fundamental important things in educating everybody in the value of technology and how it helps benefit people and how it can come and hurt us. And so we need lots of STEM education. And that's one thing that Mano is really pushing both through our Vice President for Research and Innovations Office, as well as our Vice Chancellor for Research. They're trying to enhance STEM education, see the crossover between different disciplines. And that's true. And I will say when I go to Connecticut, and I was there in Connecticut, and I'm looking around a place I lived 50 years ago, they are pushing STEM. And I think that's a very important thing, and I'm glad you're doing it too. Now, in the last few minutes, you've been out of town for almost two years. What's your impression of Hawaii coming back here? I think you left, what, June of 2016? That's right. So any changes? How are we doing? I think Hawaii is still a vibrant place. It's doing really well. I'm actually impressed in some of the buildings that are going up and the economy look. Have you seen Kaka Ako? Oh, yes. Isn't that remarkable? Yeah, it's fantastic. It's fabulous. And I think that that just tells you that the economy here is growing and is vibrant. It's not the best. I mean, economies, you always want to have something better. Of course, I should add that we've had Matt Burby on who's doing sea level rise studies. Kaka Ako is not the best place to put new buildings, but it's a whole new development. I can only talk, as I'll say, a visitor now. And as a visitor, it's still the great place it's always been. It's, I think, growing and doing well. And I'm going to be back more often, particularly when the snowstorms come to the East Coast. It must be great. Well, I think we're getting close to the end of the show, Jonathan. So let me thank you again. It's a great pleasure to have you here in Hawaii and on Think Tech Hawaii. Oh, it's my pleasure. It's really good. Yes. So let me remind the viewers, you have been watching Think Tech Hawaii Research in Mana. I've been your host, Pete McGinnis-Mark. And my guest today has been Dr. Jonathan Grady, who is the president of Terror Systems Incorporated. And Jonathan's been visiting us from Connecticut and learning all about the recent advances in business here in Hawaii. So thank you again, Jonathan. Thanks to the viewers. And we'll see you again next week. We're having a live off-site broadcast from Houston, Texas, where I hopefully I'll be reporting on the 49th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference. So we'd like, I'll see you then. Goodbye for now.