 It's one o'clock on a Monday afternoon, so you must be watching Think Tech Hawaii Research in Manila. I'm your host, Pete McGinnis-Mark, and every week we bring you updates on some interesting research which has been done in the Hawai'i Institute of Geophysics and Planetology. And unfortunately, this is my last show for a few months because I've got a teach next semester, but I thought it was a really good idea to actually bring in, as our final guest of the year, Dr. Robert Wright, who is the Interim Director of HIGP, to sort of explain to us some more overview kind of topics as well as fill in some of the missing gaps which we haven't had in the last few months. So, Rob, welcome to Think Tech Hawaii. It's a pleasure to have you here. You're my boss, so I have to defer to you on a number of things. But let me just start the discussion. We know that there's the Geology and Geophysics Department at the University. Explain to us what is the difference between HIGP and the Geology Department. So historically, many professors in the current Geology and Geophysics Department had split appointments with the Institute of Geophysics back in the day, 10, 20, 30, 40 years ago. Two things. First of all, HIGP does a lot more planetary science. So the P part of HIGP kind of spanned off from a planetary science group, which had its origins kind of up in Manoa, the Institute for Astronomy back in the 80s, moved down to the Sinclair Basement. And then the P part of HIGP joined with the G part of HIGP was born. So HIGP has a much stronger planetary science focus. Strictly Geology and Geophysics is an instructional department, whereas HIGP is an organized research unit. The consequence of this is twofold in terms of how we function maybe differently. So Geology and Geophysics is an instructional unit. HIGP, most of our faculty of research faculty, now nobody in HIGP receives more than three quarters of their salary from the university. We have 41 faculty, almost all of them have to find one quarter of their annual salary from external grants and contracts. Many of the faculty get no support for us. We've had many of our guests over the last few months. They seem like geologists to me. Is that somewhat different? Is there a special theme that underlines the kind of research which Institute does? So our focus on planetary science in particular has led us to more in the direction of developing our own technology to make the measurements that we use to do science. So if you're studying the planets, it's very hard to go out and collect rocks. What you have to do is design instruments, which will go on spacecraft, which will be launched into space, which will go into orbit around a planet, and then make measurements of the chemistry of the atmosphere, the chemistry of the rocks and minerals of the planet's surface. So much of our research is in technology development. NASA funds, NASA has several different programs across the terrestrial and planetary sciences aimed at developing prototype instruments which might one day make into space. So you come up with an idea for making a measurement. Now most of NASA's, most of the things that NASA launches into the solar system are designed to do one thing, and that's to measure the chemistry of things without touching them. If you can do that, you can work out an awful lot about the history of a planet and its current state. And you mentioned NASA. Is that the primary funding source for the institute, or do you get people getting like National Science Foundation or other kinds of all? So our primary funding is from NASA. But many of the things that we do for NASA also have rollovers and application which other sponsors are interested in. So for example, if you're making a device which measures the chemistry of the gas, gas is in the Martian atmosphere for example. There are lots of applications on Earth where people are interested in measuring gases in the atmosphere. So we also get Department of Defense money, not for developing weapons but for strategic awareness. There are many applications where it's useful to know if there's an explosive which is giving off some kind of vapor. Right, because Margo Edwards has been on the show in the past and she talked about underwater technique. Is that something the institute is still working on? One of our faculty, Anna Pam Miser, is currently developing a laser-based instrument which can detect targets of interest through a length of water. Most of what we do is, I mean, I have research projects funded to measure volcanic gases coming out of Kilauea Volcano. I'd say Anna Pam and Shiv Sharma are the only people who are currently making instruments which use light passed through the water column to work out the chemistry of targets that are submerged. Okay, so it's technology development as well as just making scientific measurements? Yeah, I mean the technology development is important. I mean, I said earlier, most of NASA's instruments measure the chemistry of things without touching them but there are many ways to skin a cat and the key is making instruments which make the science measurement scientists need with more accuracy and precision but at the same time making them smaller and smaller and more power efficient such that they don't cost as much to launch. Okay. And how long has the institute been in existence? So the institute was established in 1959 and... Before the space program, presumably, we weren't getting... Yeah, I mean, I assume it was on the books a period of time. So, I mean, it's not just HLGP doesn't just do planetary science, I mean the G-part of HLGP is focused on terrestrial geophysics and geology but then also one of our main roles and the reasons for our existence is to provide service to the state in matters of the geophysics of Hawaii. So this is... Yeah, we've had Brett Butler previously talking about tsunamis. I think Gerard Fryer was here a couple of months ago talking about tsunamis as well. Is that the kind of role that HLGP plays? Tsunamis is a focus. So another faculty member, James Foster, was in the news within the last couple of years because he developed a system for using GPS receivers on cargo ships to measure the height of ocean waves that maybe provide an early warning tsunami, a tsunami warning system. So tsunamis is a big focus. We also have... We've recently made two joint hires with the Water Resources Center associated with an NSF-funded project called the IQI project, which is basically aimed at discovering, if you like, new resources or better managing the resources of drinking water in the state of Hawaii, which is really important to the people of Hawaii. And again, Nicole Loutse was on the show early this year. We had Niels Grobe last week. So IQI is part of the HLGP effort or their faculty members involved in this kind of effort. Yeah, and we also have two other faculty members, Jenny Engels and Barbara Bruno, who are working more on the educational aspects of trying to get students from underrepresented groups involved in science via the IQI project. So would you count this sort of thing as service to the state, or is it outreach to the broader community? How does this differ from what the Geology and Geophysics Department is doing on instruction? Well, I mean, the GNG department do an awful lot of their research. It's also a service to the state. Now, our instructional role is reduced compared to the Geology and Geophysics Department. But as I said earlier, the way we make up for that is by getting more research funding. Service to the state, certainly some of the things we do are obvious that they're relevant to the state. Other things are less obvious. But the grants that we get into study stardust, for example. Hopefully she was on... Yeah, so Hope, Gary, Sasha, Croft, Gary Huss. So the relevance to the state of those things might not be particularly obvious, but they are relevant because all of the NASA grant money that they get to fund those projects is an influx of money into the state of Hawaii, into the Hawaiian economy, which wouldn't come here if they didn't get that money. Secondly, it establishes HIGP as a world leader in those fields, as well as my chemistry. Thirdly, we graduate a good number of graduate students who go on to become leaders in the space industry and the space sector themselves. So, for example, one of your former students is now the principal investigator of a... Mark Robinson, for example, in the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. Yeah, we're well known for it and we train them well and they go on and get a good job. Can you put some numbers behind this? Do you say there's, like, just about 40 faculty? In general terms, what's the annual budget? So last year we raised about $8 million in external grants and contracts, primarily from NASA, DOE, Department of Energy, so Don Thomas does geothermal work, as does Nicole Lant. And we probably... We're about a three-to-one multiplier in terms of the funding that the state give us when we go out and get... Historically, we've always gone out and get three of the dollars from NASA. So the state might provide two, two and a half million in salaries? About three. About three, and so you raise eight. So it's a pretty good return on the investment, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, I think it is. I mean, I don't know where else you would get, you know, on an annual basis. I mean, it's been like that for a decade. Certainly not my mutual fund, that's probably that way. And he may have offered it. We all know where he is now, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so we've been in existence since 1959. We've got a number of faculty members that have continued to do this huge range of research interests. Over the last few months, we've had a great diversity of faculty coming in and some of the students sort of things. So, you know, is this typical at the university at Manoa, or is this kind of unusual? I think research intensive departments are not unusual at universities on the mainland. I mean, they're not the norm. I mean, you know, universities are primarily places where things are discovered and new knowledge is created that those discoveries and that knowledge is disseminated to the world. And we also train young minds. I mean, that's the focus of a university, right? Now, any university will have research specialisms in which they're particularly competitive for raising extramural grants and contracts. Now, in those departments, and this is true on the mainland as it is anywhere, in those departments, the faculty will have a lighter instructional administrative load because they're expected to go in and raise the external dollar. And H-H-E-P is part of World of Ocean, Earth, Science and Technology, correct? So who does the faculty actually collaborate with? Is it just internal to H-H-E-P, or do they have collaborations across campus? So, there are collaborations within SOAS, within issues to SOAS, but also at the scale of the wider university and increasingly so. So recently, Hopi Shi'i, who's a cosmochemist, was part of a group which was funded by the Manoa Vice Chancellor for Research to develop a center of excellence or an instructional center of excellence for material science. So we have a transmission electron microscope in the basement which can image individual atom. Now, geologists might use that to study interplanetary dust particles. But people who are interested in building and developing ultra-hard materials which have industrial and other kind of applications are also interested in making the same measurements. So Hopi is working with a group from the Natural Energy Institute which is in our basement and also physics and chemistry to try and pool our intellectual resources to take this asset and make it more productive at the scale of the campus. And also when we had Carolyn Kaplan on the show, the kind of kit she's using, she had this huge, huge iron micropobe. It seemed to me as if that's, you know, is it unique or are there many of them at other universities? Does HIGP have sort of this specialized equipment in various disciplines? So the micropobe is not unique, but they are by no means common. Okay. I would imagine so. It's quite expensive. That was a very expensive piece of kit, which was, again, I mean, the university had to pay some towards it, but it was funded to a larger extent by the Keck Foundation, as well as by NASA. The Transmission Electron Microscope, the university invested in that facility. But it was also a large investment on the part of NASA. Now, NASA invests in us because we're good at what we do. But NASA, you know, NASA and Keck don't just go around handing out millions of dollars to any old department, any old university. So, yeah, we do have quite a lot of specialized equipment. And as I said, if it doesn't exist, then our faculty have a good track record of building it themselves. Okay. And one of the other items which I've been impressed by is that there's a group called the Hawaii Space Flight Lab, which also has pretty unusual facilities in the basement of the school's building, correct? Yeah. So the Space Flight Lab kind of started in 2006, was kind of when it was first established. And then two years ago, launched its own rocket from PMRF over in Kauai. The Pacific Missile Range. Using a launch vehicle that, the design of which was led by Luke Flynn and his team, H-A-G-P. They installed the launch pad on PMRF. They shipped over the rail launcher. They had a spacecraft built in the post-building on the Manoa campus in H-A-G-P. So that project is a collaboration with the Department of Engineering as well, College of Engineering. So, you know, to almost backtrack to your earlier question, we don't just live in isolation. A lot of the things we do, we can collaborate with physics, we can collaborate with engineering, the Ikiwai project. I mean, as you know, there are collaborations there with economics. Yes. And Nicole and Neil's have been telling us in previous episodes some of the innovation. Yeah, yeah. So we don't exist in isolation. HSFL is, I mean, that's... No other university has launched its own rocket. Now, the rocket failed after a minute or half. I guess one thing people don't understand is, the first time you launch a rocket, it always fails. The first one always fails. Well, I'm going to have to stop you here because we're getting ready for a break. But when we come back, I'd like to get some perspective on where might the institute be going and what is track record in the past been. So let me just remind the viewers, you are watching Think Tech Hawaii Research in Mana. I'm your host, Pete McGinnis-Mark, and my guest today is my boss, Rob Wright, who is the interim director of HIGP. And we'll be back in about a minute. We'll see you then. I just walked by and I said, what's happening, guys? They told me they were making music. That's my life. I love music. I saw a dude. Living in this crazy world. So far up in the confusion. Nothing is making sense. There's got to be solutions. How to make a brighter... Welcome back to Think Tech Hawaii Research in Mana. I'm your host, Pete McGinnis-Mark, and my guest today is interim HIGP director, Rob Wright. Welcome back again, Rob. I guess one of the signs of a successful research group at any university is the quality of the students that graduate. Can you just give us some idea of, we've had Casey Hannibal on. We've had Bill Barney on. They seem to be really tough flight. How would you gauge HIGP compared to some of the other national programs? Well, HIGP, we have good faculty who train good students. They do interesting things. They learn a lot with us. Quite often, what they learn straddles the disciplines of science and engineering, which makes them employable in a whole different range of fields. Getting high-profile jobs, doing what they were trained to do, is a sign of a job well. So where do they go once they leave UH? So from people we've graduated in the last 10 years, we have at least two who are now working over at Johns Hopkins in the Applied Physics Lab, involved at high levels in various NASA planetary mission. Only recently, one of our postdocs, David Trang, was selected by NASA to be on the OSIRIS-REx science data analysis team. So OSIRIS-REx launched next year, will return material from... And that's the space mission, right? Yeah, so it's gonna be launched next year, will return samples back to Earth from an asteroid. David's been selected on the team to analyze that material. I mean, that's a big deal. Not much is gonna come back, and that's people looking at it. When he came on the show in the fall of this year, he was just hoping to be selected. So this is a new discovery? He's one of a relatively small handful of people that were selected to be able to look at that material. Yeah, one of my former postdocs who graduated with Paul Lucy and H.I.G.P. Sarah Kreitz, she's now working at the Japanese Space Agency over near Tokyo, and she's involved in all sorts of Japanese space mission. I mean, this goes back in time. We mentioned Mark Robertson earlier, but there's been a whole bunch of people who've fluxed through H.I.G.P. But Bob Brown, who built a camera that went into orbit on Cassini around Saturn, for example, Lucie McFadden, Beth Barg, they're all... Fraser, Finale, Tom McCall. So does this mean that most of H.I.G.P. students, when they graduate, continue their research, or do they go into teaching, or do they disappear into industry and make lots of money? I mean, some go into industry. Academia is a broad-based pyramid with a narrow tip, right? So there are more MS students than there are PhD spots. There are more PhD graduates than there are postdocs, there are more postdocs than there are faculty. So not everybody can end up doing what we train them to do, but what we train them to do is applicable to many other things than simply studying tsunamis or studying the chemistry of the surface of Mercury. So they learn, they can all program when they come out. They're all very new. I was amazed when Casey Hannibal was on the show. Her diverse range of experience, she was flying this balloon in Antarctica, looking at microwave, telescope, and then she's trying to be an astronaut. Things like that. Yeah, well, I guess our contacts open up avenues for our graduate students. Yeah. Because of the esteem with which the H.I.G. program is held, we get a lot of funding from NASA. We collaborate with a lot of people from top universities on the mainland, and that opens up opportunities for our graduate students. So in the past, they've been highly successful, but where do you see the future going? Is it with planetary missions? President Trump says we go back to the moon, for example. Or is it more of the direct service to the state? I mean, I think both. I mean, NASA's not going to go away. The aspects of our planetary science or terrestrial science research, I mean, I primarily use satellites not to study the planets, to study the Earth, to study volcanoes on Earth. The research that we do is funded, and I don't see any reason why it's not going to be funded in the future. NASA is well funded. The DOD and the DOE are well funded. So I see us continuing in those areas. David's selection just proves that there's a demand, that his skills aren't necessarily acquired for another five years, but he's funded by NASA now. In terms of service to the state, the state is going to face an increasing number of environmental challenges. Now, the Ikea-Wi project's a prime example. I mean, deserts are not deserted because they're hot. They're deserted because there's no drinkable water or usable water. Now, we're surrounded by water. Unfortunately, we can't use it for anything unless we try and take the salt out, which requires a catastrophic amount of power. So finding new drinking water resources is essential to the state of Hawaii. Linked with the drinking water waste or the groundwater question is the geothermal energy question. Now, you know, Hawaii is a... We import a lot of oil. We use a lot of non-renewable. It's expensive, as everybody knows. We hear on the news every morning how much gas you're going to try and fill at the car. You know, Don Thomas over on the Big Island has had a long history in looking for geothermal energy resources. For no... Not for a sinister reason, just because it'd be nice if we'd generate more of our energy locally. It covers the base load as the state's trying to become 100% renewable by 2050. And it's a job creator. Yeah. It's a win-win. Now, you have to be sensitive to how you do it, but it's not. It's somewhat noble. And, of course, one of the other themes running through this program over the last few months has been the impacts of climate change. Water is one issue. Are there any other climate change-related activities, like sea-level rise or coral reef? Certainly in Seawist and certainly within the wider university. Sea-level rise... There's a large sea-level rise group in the Department of Geology and Geophysics. Yeah, Matt Barrett became non-rude. Yeah, yeah. I'd say in HLGP, we... I mean, we have an affiliate faculty member who uses satellites to study the urban heat island effect, so the warming of cities during the day by virtue of the excess energy that they produce, which is bad for the human health. But we... I'd say our service to the state environmentally is largely with the water resource questionals, geothermal energy... Geothermal and earthquakes... So, the geophysical environment would be the earthquakes... The geophysical environment. And then we've got upcoming... Back to the financial side, we've got upcoming missions, I believe, of agents, Shivshama and Anupam Mishwa. They're engaged in this new fantastic mission to Mars in three years' time. Yeah, so we've always had people on NASA's science team. You know, NASA, when they're planning a mission, they ask people's opinion on what it should do. Once the mission is launched, they ask for scientists to bid competitively to be funded to analyze the data. So we've always had a mixture of people on science teams in various guises. Sarah is basically going to be a roaming geologist on Mars. So, Sarah, they have just a regular kind of camera on the Mars 2020 mission. Now, a field geologist, a traditional field geologist, would wander around with a lens and their notebook, and they'd look at rocks and they'd make notes and they'd get the microscope and look up close. Sarah's job is going to be to try and be a virtual geologist on Mars using this hand-lens image. And I should point out that the PI on that experiment is another one of our former grad students, right, Jim Bell, out in the state. Now, Shiv and Anupam are doing something quite different. They're not looking at the texture or the position of rocks and whether the rocks are layered. They're part of a team that's building an instrument to measure the chemistry of rocks using a technique that they've been working on for a long time and they've, through their brain power, they've managed to work out a way of making it make precise measurements from a very small package that can go on a planetary rover. So it sounds as if the best tones for HAGPO in the future, correct? I think so. By virtue of how successful we've been in the past. I mean, we are like building on previous experience. Yeah, we're trusted to do well. We're trusted to succeed on projects that people fund us to do. Well, this is your institute. And let me just say, as the host of Think Take over the last six months, it's been a great pleasure to have many of your faculty and your students come and be on the show because it's really been exciting, actually learning a lot about the kind of research which they're doing, as well as the value to the state, not only in terms of direct relevance, but also the economic drivers. So thank you again, Rob. I'm afraid we're running out of time. Thank you, Pete. So let me just remind the viewers, you have been watching Think Tech Hawaii Research in Minnaa. I bring you host Pete McGinnis-Mark. And as I said at the beginning of the show, this is my last show for probably about six months. I actually have to go and teach one of the classes for Rob. We hope to have a new guest host coming in the new year, but until we return, probably in the summer, thank you for watching and continue to watch Think Tech Hawaii Research in Minnaa. Goodbye for now.