 Good afternoon folks. Ted Rolston here in our studio downtown Honolulu think tech studios with our show where the drone leaves with a fantastic panel of guests that string halfway through the Hawaiian islands here. Sitting with me at the table in Honolulu we have, first of all, our most important guest here. We have Katrina Kuo, eighth grader at New Valley Middle School, and we have her overseer, protector and principal, Sean Tajima, and we have, to Katrina's left, we have Dr. John Rand at UH who runs the outreach and the in reach for STEM for the state. STEM education, STEM involvement and community outreach and such. And standing by on the line we have one of our frequent flyers on the show, there he is, George Purdy. George Purdy of many different skills and world recognition in the world in the game of STEM and in the game of drones and such. Anyway, welcome on board folks. We have a lot of people, a lot of opinions, and a long way to go on the show. We talk about drones in general, where they're going, where they're coming, what problems they have, and what we have to do to make them useful to us in society. But you've got something coming up in a week that's really cool where a lot of this will start to happen at the science level, at the engineering level. And this will be the annual, the semifinals, you might say, for the state of Hawaii's science and engineering competition. It used to be called Science Fair in my days. That was a long time ago. In fact, you know, when I was born, the earth hadn't crusted over yet. So we had to wear thick shoes because it was all molten out there, right? But it's since hardened over and we've been in the streets and all. Anyway, this is an incredible issue here STEM in Hawaii. Tell us a little bit about how you and UH and the community colleges can kind of wrap your arms around this whole issue of STEM and how do you define it? How do you turn it into a value for the society and help it go forward? Yeah, science, technology, engineering, and math is a national phenomenon that's going on. I think everybody recognizes the very, very important part that it's going to play in our future. And you can argue that it's here now. But it's going to grow and it's growing really fast and it certainly is going to grow here in Hawaii. We're going to, we at the University of Hawaii are committed to really trying to make sure that our state is competitive and that we have enough skilled workforce here. And so we've set up the Office of STEM Education here at the University of Hawaii and we are now in the process of trying to get coordinated to all of our different campuses and all of the kind of work that we're trying to do in STEM to kind of get a better arrangement in terms of coordination so we can talk more clearly to our K-12 partners and we can talk to the workforce here in Hawaii and let them know that we have students that are going to come out that are extremely well trained to take the jobs of the future. And then we have to design a program at UH that attracts people like Katrina, so she doesn't end up going to California to go to college, right? Want her to go to UH and continue developing the breed here. Yeah, the brain drain problem. It's always significant in Hawaii. We oftentimes lose our best and brightest, but I think there's been a lot of really wonderful opportunities recently that have begun to slow that down and we want to continue to keep that happening. And of course, if you can go to the mainland, you're very successful, go but come back. Come back after you've made your mark there. And so the job of all of us is to figure out the architecture and the plans and the programs that will go forward and produce something that people can come back to. I know I went away in 1963 and this came back five years ago. That's right. That's what we do. So Sean, in the curriculum you develop at school and such, how do you take advantage of or get frightened by this evolving, undefined domain of STEM? So we're pursuing a lot of advancements in STEM ourselves. We have an excellent science program at the Valley. We have an after-school robotics team that does very well. And we have students like Katrina who are doing really great projects and are very successful. Katrina is the winner of our school science fair. She created a project on her own with an electronic device to measure medication for patients that alerts them and also measures the correct dose. And she'll be going on to the district science fair, which is coming up next week Saturday at Kapilani Community College. And people in the public can come to that too, observe the judging and interact with the kids and see the projects and things going on. I've actually been a judge at the state competition down at the convention center and I'll tell you, it's a stressful day because there's a lot of stuff on display and it's so well done. It's hard to actually take it in and judge one versus the other. You want to give them all the blue ribbon, you know? Anyway, and then we have George Purdy on my eye. George, you're involved heavily in the STEM program and Pulama and other cultural and technical events on the island. How do we hook you? How do we take his ideas, what he's developed, which are pretty incredible, and bring them over to Oahu? And how do we take what Oahu's doing and get it over to George? Well, I think it's a great missing link because a lot of the questions coming out of my community is where does it fall within our university system, which is UH. So I'm glad to finally meet Dr. Rand that this is the connection that we've been missing. So a lot of parents here, I believe now with a start from K through university level that it'll help them push their child and also give us more support in what we want to do. And then just listening to Katrina's story, I mean, this is what, especially the legislation like we've done this past week that was, you know, those bills were going to kill a lot of these future jobs and kill a dream of that child right there. And that's what I want to avoid. You know, a lot of the education within the STEM, we need some policymaking so that our young folks can actually voice their opinion and help create these new bills to pave that pathway so that our kids can stay home or come back to a way. We don't mind them leaving, but we need to get them to come home. That's what I've been seeing is we dealing with all the emails that we've been doing. And Katrina, I give you props that what I'm trying to do here is for my child and every child in the state of Hawaii, and I'm very proud of you. I'll do my best every day. Can you imagine a better spokesman for our collective effort here than George? And George was back a long way to the famous Purdy family of 1912 in the National Rodeo Competition in Nebraska or somewhere, which Purdy family won them all. So anyway, George is still carrying that flame forward. So this is a lot of things come to my mind. I was thinking, when you describe what your project is, Katrina, it made me think, how do we scale what you might call a research question that we make available to kids? Through the organized STEM programs, the university and the scholastic level, we do have the opportunity to sort of manage how we put out those problems. But I think that might actually harm the situation. We ought to put the full load on you. It's your future, and we're just in a way right now. So we probably need to reveal to you the big scope of all the things that the future has to think about. And George was just alluding to some of them right here. We've been spending all week at the legislature dealing with proposed bills and such that if incorrectly interpreted, slow things down and get in our way. So one of the issues we have to have you help us face and tackle is these issues of technology incorporation in the future world. And so that's a problem we'll leave on your table. In fact, we'll be speaking at John's at the final session on Capilani on Saturday, we'll be doing a drone demo with some other folks out there. I think we'll give you guys a list. Here's your task list, which you have to take care of for the future that we didn't do. So thank you for being so good at what you're doing. Thank you. And make all your friends do the same thing. And then we get hooked up. We got to hook up with George. We got to get a Lanai Oahu combination going or maybe a sister school, something like that, and get George over here and get somebody from your school over to Lanai. How about that, George? How about we do a little exchange? Well, I'm no problem. Anytime, any. Let's do it. It's easy, you know, the more kids that our kids get exposed to and vice versa, I mean, this is a great place to learn. And it's wide open. It's not congested. You know, it'll be just nice once that is able to happen. We have the UH here. Why not? You know, our kids go there for UN, junior UN and other scholastic leagues. This drone thing is it's right up our alley. That's an interesting point. And it kind of takes us back to the whole drone issue. I got into this out of the aerospace industry, so I had some knowledge of the pieces that go into it. The schools and universities just picked this stuff up and running with it. And it's sort of interesting because it's cuts across all denominations of the scholastic system, engineering, science, materials, software, coding, testing. All this stuff is all combined here and something that turns ideas into reality and into success or failure really quick, unlike business where it may take a year between the time you start something and the time you get some feedback. So it's a great tool for pulling together all these different ways to look at things and manage them. So in terms of the drones themselves, there's also a big list of things that they need to be successful in the future. What we have today in drones probably won't survive the next couple of years because there's not enough reliability, not enough standardization, not enough ability to really be economically useful in the configurations we have today. We need materials work, we need propulsion work, we need communications work, software work. So that's gonna be on the list that you guys are gonna get from us on Saturday, okay? Okay. So John, then how do we take what George is thinking about and you mentioned that you're starting to put together the pieces that connect to all the community colleges and the schools. What, how do we do that? How do we get everybody together? It's a, it's a, it's a classic tension that takes place between the really cool things like a drone. No question about it. Everybody wants to, you know, fly them and then we wanna learn about them. We wanna use them as a primary source to learn from. The technology is without question, fantastic. It's something that folks are gonna want, particularly if you're gonna be a STEM major. But you also gotta have the fundamental sciences. So we always gotta have that tension and balance. We need a clear message to our students if you wanna do this kind of stuff, which is great. You've still gotta, you gotta take math classes and you gotta take your science classes. You know, there's a minimum science requirement in Hawaii. If you wanna be a scientist or a science major or an engineer or someone working with technology, you gotta go and take an extra science course, you know? And that course might be something that is related to this, you know? We took off in robotics more than a decade ago. The state made a conscious decision to push robotics. And since that time, I mean, it's worked. We now at the university are starting to see our students who came in from the VEX programs and from, you know, the Lego leagues and first robotics. From New Valley Intermediate School. Yeah, sure, I'm sure they were part of it. And it was a big revolution in Hawaii. We're gonna push robotics and it seems to really work. I mean, you put that kind of emphasis on a program. It really works. Students get excited and jazzed up about it. But always remember, take a lot of courses. You can't, you know, if you have elective credit and you have time, think about that because it's really, really important to your career. It's always gonna help you. And I'm talking about physics. I mean, the physics of how this thing works is fantastic. The engineering that goes into it. The chemistry, right? You mentioned material science. Super, super important. And of course you gotta get up to the levels of calculus if you wanna have a STEM degree. So you wanna don't just take the minimum, try to take that extra course if you can. But if we decide to go in this direction, and I'm all for it in terms of building up drone technology and drone academics related projects in the state, I think it's a fantastic tool to teach kids and to get kids engaged and so on in STEM education. There's two quick anecdotes come to mind. One was an advertisement that one of the professional societies ran several years ago. It showed an Indy 500 racer pulls into the pits and the guys jump all over and change parts and things goes out again and all this high techs up and really cool looking uniforms and all. And the thing is, this is great. You wanna be a part of this? Go get yourself a PhD in engineering. Cause no one touches this car or the tools or the pit without a PhD in engineering. Oh, I didn't think about that. So that's a good motivation. Well, the cool thing about this though is it isn't gonna, I mean, there's technician jobs all over the place. You mentioned the community colleges. You know, we have a lot of programs. I'm sure drone piloting is probably not gonna require a PhD. We're gonna take our first break here. Let's talk about how we're gonna build this whole program up in drones, like you did in robotics when we get back from our break. It's me, Angus McTech, wishing you a welcome and join us to see us on Hibachi Talk on Think Tech Hawaii. Join my co-hosts, Gordo the tech star and Andrew the security guy every Friday from 1300 to 1345. We look forward to see you. We'll talk tech and we'll have some weeb and fun. And remember, let your wing gang free. Where are you be? Aloha. Aloha, I'm Carl Campania, host of Think Tech Hawaii's Movers, Shakeers and Reformers. I hope you join us over the next several weeks as we take a deep dive into biofuels in Hawaii and explore the alternative fuels supply chain necessary for the local and global transition towards transportation fuel sustainability. Join us as we have good conversations with our farmers, our producers, our conversion technologies, our investors and our legislators as we try to achieve our transportation sustainability goals. See you soon. We are back folks live here in Honolulu and on Lanai. Ted Ralston here with our incredible group of people from the West to the East. We have George Purdy standing by in Lanai City and the sun hasn't set yet in Lanai City. It's nice. And at the table here, we have Katrina Kao. Cole. We have Dr. John Rand and we have Sean Tajima, two from New Valley Middle School, principal and principal winner of the science fair. Heading off to the regional championships, regional finals next week, next Saturday at Kapi Atlantic Community College. Dr. John Rand from UHU is attempting to both manage and also unmanage this entire evolving world of drones as a subset of robotics. So we're talking John during the break about whatever, however, how did the expansion, the promulgation and the value extraction out of robotics work? How can we look at that as a model for how this broader version here, drones might follow in terms of the schools and such? I think that there's a lot of opportunities for students to really get engaged when they begin to work with this kind of material in classes and stuff. I mean, it's just a way to get everybody really, really excited about things. And I think that happened through our big emphasis with the robotics programs that were, that took place all the way from middle school to graduate school at the university. And it became a really important kind of initiative that we could rally around. And we're now seeing some of these students that started off in First Robotics and so on. They're coming to the University of Hawaii. We had a huge increase in the number of mechanical engineers that came, specifically mechanical engineers, which told us it was probably robotics. I mean, it wasn't just a bump, a blip in the data. So you can see this track. We can actually track these students and we can see, especially the transfer students that are coming from our community colleges, it was much larger in the field of mechanical engineering. So we're gonna track Katrina for the next eight years, right? Absolutely. So we're gonna have to record it and... Starting right here. But it's real key that these students, they get themselves prepared so that they have all the opportunities that they want. Because the more math and science that you take in the K-12, the much better you're gonna be and the more you're gonna be able to do this kind of fun. And in that regard to robotics, was there, say, several fundamental principles or several major themes that distinguished that approach to robotics from, say, how we deal with physics or math or chemistry? Was there some formative, structured thought that drove that forward? Yeah, I think we weren't as intentional back then. I mean, it was a great opportunity. It was only 10 years ago, Johnny. Well, you know, we've been learning how to do this right. You know, I think we didn't align the curriculum as well as we might have. We didn't do that kind of faculty development so that some of our high school teachers and middle school teachers had a lot of experience with robotics, but we got mentors from the field to come in and support the schools and we did it sort of that way. I think that students love this kind of stuff. Having an opportunity to really engage in what they're doing. And I think we need to expand that and get a lot more faculty development potentially for our K-12 faculty so that they can be the ones that mentor their students directly and have a really rich experience with their students rather than trying to, I mean, we still gotta do that, right? We gotta have guys like you and our friend over on Lanai who know this stuff, you know, really know it to be able to help us. But I think that we need to merge that or blend this kind of technology and research with the education piece. Okay, we can get some of that from some of the work George has been doing with the public safety people on Lanai. They ran a simulated aircraft accident issue at Lanai Airport right at the airport with the FAA part of it and ran drones as part of the recovery space identification. So coming from that alone is a way to pictorialize how first responders think and how their thinking can be enhanced by this sort of thing. So we could work maybe this year and kind of come up with these themes that drones are expanding from robotics would capitalize on. One that I find really interesting is these are complicated systems. We got this unit here. We got the ground controller or maybe some future version that Katrina's gonna design for us that's better than these. We got radio communication in between them. We've got video down. This is a really complicated situation. We've got the atmosphere in the middle of it. We've got GPS satellites feeding information to it. This is, we need to model these things in a scientifically sound modeling method. Not just one, but 500, 5,000 over on Google. 500 over on I. And how does this whole thing, how does this whole system behave and be reliable and be safe? That's one more thing on the list, Katrina, for you to think about mass modeling of these really complex subjects. We'll take those props off of there. Give the kids a piece of balsa wood and say, make me a prop for that. Just a replacement prop and you have to learn about pitch and the way the force is generated when that prop moves. You need to know how fast it's gonna spin, right? Is that's gonna generate a different amount of force? Those kind of principles are absolutely vital to a physics course, for example. But, I mean, the fun part is to actually whittle it down and actually get a piece of balsa and make that pitch properly and maybe use, test it against the real drone and see if you get the same lift capacity with the students props versus. So you just introduced the stress to the system. You said, instead of taking a prop out of a box of somebody else made, figure it out yourself. And then figure it out better, that's cool. Are you feeling a lot of pressure here? Are you and your peers at George's Kids on Linae? Yeah, but it's also kind of fun to build stuff. Okay, we can't forget the fun part, can we? Yeah. Okay. And that means bringing in your family. That means bringing in the community. Another one would be collecting all the plastic trash that's in the ocean, reverse engineering all of that and building airframes and props out of that. This guy is brilliant. And the goal is holding her out. Hey, George, you only get three bright ideas for show. That's two already, almost five, brother. So, George is well-known across the country through a lot of these TV shows and other things is trips to Alaska and such. And they're picking his brain left and right for how to make these things move forward in exactly that domain. Take something that's a problem today and make it better. So that's where the schools could come in on Oahu as well. We could, yeah, I think they, I think we're to you. Katrina's a model student as a STEM student for us and she's taking up the opportunities we've provided. As I said, she's our science fair winner and she's also on our school robotics team that went to the state tournament. And this weekend, she's gonna be competing with our math team at the math competition. So she's a very well-rounded STEM student with a bright future. And I'm hoping she continues to succeed as I had a unique opportunity to travel for the International Science and Engineering Fair for the past two years. So we took the winners from Hawaii to the mainland. So last year we went to Arizona the year before as in Pittsburgh and there was about 60 countries present with about 2,000 projects. So the best and brightest of the world. And I'm proud to say that last year we had our highest rank ever, a student from Roosevelt trying to find a cure for Alzheimer's and he placed, I would say in the top five out of about 2,000 projects. Wow. So we should not be at all hesitant about putting real serious problems on the table in front of these kids. I don't wanna be differential on calling you a kid. I'm sorry about that. It's okay. It's just an age thing. But anyway, these young people who are moving forward fast and are gonna solve some of those problems. Exactly. They're able to think very globally and it never ceases to amaze me on the level of projects that they've done. Like Katrina's as an eighth grader when she created this is remarkable. And moving on to the science fair, she's gonna be one someday to create something great that's gonna solve a big problem in the world. Okay, I just want her on my team. Thank you. We want her all on our team. So the other part as a parent also, if we can get UH, the university to put pressure on the DOE to connect that link, there's a missing gap that a lot of our DOE students even for the principal here, sometimes he feels a hogtie. We've done all our after school programs in after school, not even during school. They learn more in two hours than they do all day sometimes. So that's what I wanna change. And that's what I'm working hard. UH put pressure on DOE to start getting these things. Katrina, perfect example. What if we had a whole school? Like our school is 500. What if we had 500 kids just like Katrina? What a golden opportunity and the folks that we have in Hawaii that the rest of the world would want. Oh, there you go. You know, George makes another good point without saying it. And that's that we, in this show, we've had like a hundred episodes. We talk about these things and look at the problems and look at the future. We kind of decided that for this year, we're gonna make community involvement and educational involvement the theme of this basic discussion to the extent we can. And we got a bill that's a Senate bill on a house bill in the ledge that is asking for some funding to generate field experiences, field exercises, taking real problems and solving them with real systems. And in agriculture, in public safety, public health, environment, beach erosion, atmospheric issues, ocean safety, and fire and volcanic issues. Every dimension we can think of where there's a value to the proposition potential. Let's create it by a field exercise with everybody involved, the community involved. So the community votes and includes the schools and the kids and the parents. It votes on what is most useful and now we get the community involvement and also probably some really good ideas on how things might wanna go forward. If we don't do that kind of active involvement and penetrate out in the community and find what works and what doesn't work, we'll probably have a little bit off on our theme. But if we can do that and get that kind of involvement, just like you're doing on Saturday, we can get the target zeroed in a bit tighter and go forward. And the community involvement with schools and what you folks are doing, we'll actually put the community in a better place when they talk to their legislature to write good bills that help support to grow an industry, put the right rules out there and not us beating the old folks that have the chain on the brain, as well as I call it. Okay, boy, we heard four from you, George, this time and not just three, so you're over your limit on the show. I'm squeezing it in there. That's great. Okay, well, we wish you the best of luck in the continuation of your eighth grade career, which will have the state finals coming up in what, April, I think, right? March? I think it's in April. April, right, at the convention center. We'll get on there and be part of that and cheer you on. Thank you. Sean, for you for coming here and talking about the school program and maybe you can generate a hookup with an eye and talk about how that goes forward. Yes, Sean. We love to see you here. Okay. We need to do it. You're the new principal I want. Thank you, thank you. I love to work with you. And we want to invite all of you to the regional science fair, the science and engineering fair that's going to be at Capulani Community College on the 11th of February. Yeah, let's talk to the public about that. Yeah. On the 11th of Saturday. Right, right, because I was asked originally by the group to go and talk to, you know, the group and the students in the afternoon, I think. And so that's kind of how we got kind of got hooked up. I was looking, there's a drone team at the University of Hawaii and the engineering college and they are going to do some cool flying and so on. I figured that you didn't want to hear me just drone on. No pun intended. So we actually invited the drone folks to come and I think it'll be exciting program. Okay. Let's start talking about that. Hope to everybody to have a look at. That starts at? Two o'clock. Two o'clock? Two to three, we're going to be flying drones and doing drone simulations and all kinds of fun things that relates to drones. What time is the science fair itself? Science fair is in the morning. Okay. And the students will be judged and that's the tension time. And hopefully then after lunchtime, it will turn into a real neat exploratory kind of have fun. Okay. And hopefully a lot of good partnerships. So we'll see a lot of the public there on the 11th. And let me thank you all for coming on the show. We are at this point out of time, but we'll see you all next Friday on the show. And George and Lonay, thanks very much for joining us. John, Katrina and John. Thanks so much.