 Bingo, we're back, five o'clock rock, special show today. You know, one of the things about Hawaii is that, you know, we grow some great kids and it's important that we grow kids in, may I call you a kid? Yeah, I'm a college student. And we grow them in science and technology and some of them are really, really bright. And you know, we have, it must be the water in Hawaii. We have kids who are really fabulous. And one of the kids I've been following since he was in the sixth grade, and he's not much beyond that, sorry, now, but he's in USC now as a student, is Christopher Lindsay and his mother Holly Lindsay, and they hail from Eolani School. And what's really interesting is that despite his fabulous success in so many ways in science fair and in other science programs at Eolani and statewide, Christopher Lindsay has actually dropped out of high school. And I want him to explain that to you. Christopher, welcome to the show. Nice to be here. Thanks for having me. Again, it's wonderful to have you here. You're so smart and articulate, I love having you on the show. So I know it's a quizzical thing to say that you've dropped out of high school, but it's not exactly that, is it? Yeah, well, people get a laugh when I say it. But yeah, USC offered me a good deal to come early to their university as part of their resident honors program. And so I decided to take the full ride scholarship that they offered me. Full ride? Did you say full ride? Yeah. That means everything, everything. Yeah, everything is paid for. Oh, okay, okay. It's very generous of them, and I'm very thankful. And my parents are very thankful, too, because USC is about $50,000 a year. Oh, wow. So by four years. So what do they like about you? What was it? The tie. It was the red tie. Oh, yeah, it's my ties that got me in, no. I think they liked my resume with all the science programs that I was only able to do because I'm from Hawaii, and my extensive research in the science fair with both the fields of astronomy and environmental science. And at USC, I'm actually going to double major in astronomy and environmental science. So I'm continuing that. It doesn't sound like it's the same thing. It's a little disparate. Can you establish the relationship? The majors are definitely separate in terms of the tracks of classes you have to take. The astronomy major is basically a physics track and an extensive math track, while the environmental science major is a biochem track. So I'm going to try and do all three major branches of science while at USC. And yeah, just science and technology is just split up into physics, bio, and chem. I know we talked to Sarah Fagans. She's a researcher at HIGP today. And she's doing research about Europa, which is one of the moons of Jupiter. Of course, you knew that. And they are speculating that there's water on there and there's heat on there. And maybe just maybe there are microorganisms on there. So your study of biochemistry may come in handy. Space biochemistry, what do you think? Yeah. Space biology would definitely be a field that I'm interested in, and hopefully I get to continue that at USC. I'm doing a research, I'm part of a research group at USC, where actually one of their jobs is to provide ground-based observations of the Juno mission, which is orbiting around Jupiter right now and taking data of Jupiter and its moons. So hopefully I'll be involved with that, at least on the ground for now. Seems like ages ago, but I remember the day when you were a younger person and you invented, rather discovered an exoplanet. Can you talk about that for a minute? What happened there? How'd you do that? So back just before ninth grade, I was part of a European Space Association mission called the Corot or Convection Rotation and Planetary Transits, which is a space telescope mission that's looking for exoplanets just all across the sky. And those are... What's an exoplanet? So they know. An exoplanet is any planet that's revolving on a star that isn't our own sun. So we have Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto, which are not Pluto anymore. But the rest of them... Can you put that to music, actually, Chris? Never mind. Maybe I can. I'll have to get a music major for that too. So any planet that isn't part of our solar system is an exoplanet. And since there's many stars in the universe, therefore there are many planets, and planets are the only type of space body we know of now that can support life. So studying exoplanets is our best chance of discovering extraterrestrial life outside of our solar system. So there you were recognized nationally for the discovery of this exoplanet. Yeah. Did they call it the Christopher Lindsey exoplanet? No, it's called Corot 29B. And I was a co-author on a paper in astronomy and astrophysics discussing some of the discoveries of the Corot mission. That's when you were in the ninth grade. Yeah. So that was a while ago now, three years ago. So USC offered you this full ride, even though you weren't finished with high school. And they said, Chris, it's okay. You can come out now. We don't need a high school diploma from you. Is that what they said? Yep. Yeah, basically. So they really wanted to have me and I really wanted to be part of the astronomy research group there. So it kind of worked out and our relationship is good. Now you had other people from Hawaii have ever gotten into this program? I haven't heard of any other people going to USC early, but there are other astronomers that have gone through the RHP program. I have a close friend who's also part of the same program and in the same research group as me. And family. You've had family that have won scholarships like this? No. My sister didn't go to USC. She went to Princeton. Okay, well. She got a similar prize, which I think we're going to talk about later, the Davidson Award. What is that? So the Davidson Award is a award given by the Davidson family, which is a family that created Mathblast, which was a popular educational math software back in the 2000s. And they made a lot of money there and they wanted to give back in the fields of education. The first thing they did was they built a school in Nevada in Reno, Nevada, and they built this school according to their terms. So there's like no grades. So kids just go and they finish classes as soon as they can and work hard. And I actually know two people from that school and they turned out really well. So the Davidson family did really well there, but they also wanted to encourage outside research, not part of a school curriculum program. So they made this Davidson Fellowship Program, which is where they give money in large sums to people who write or produce good research or music or literature portfolios, like out of a school curriculum. So an extracurricular research project can get you a really good scholarship for this Davidson program. And you get a good scholarship and you do well in your set in science for life. So is there anybody else in the family that got into the Davidson program? You want to mention any other names, for example, that people who also won the Davidson Award? So my sister, Melody Lindsay, won a Davidson Award, a $50,000 Davidson Award in heart performance. So she's actually a scientist now and a harpist actually. So she's doing both. Harp and science. Harp and science. And she lives up in Montana, where it's currently negative 40 degrees. So I'm glad. So who's happy? I'm glad I'm not there. She actually loves it. She likes the cold. Yeah. Anybody else? Yeah. So and then I won a $50,000 award this past year in the field of environmental science with my project called Ho Honu Kai, which was involved building underwater timelapse cameras and using them in various sites around Hawaii. I've seen those, well, the early ones. We made a movie of Chris and his friends from Eolani way back and God, it must be five or six years ago anyway, an Eolani project. And that's the day I met you and your mother, Holly, sitting over there. Hi, Holly. A family that stays in science. So we have a fantastic sort of photo collection. And we're going to go through some of these really interesting photos that Chris has brought down. But of course we're going to take a short break though. When we come back, we'll see you a photo collection with some really interesting things and people all about studying science at USC. I'll be right back. Aloha. My name is Danelia, D-A-N-E-L-I-A. And I'm the other half of the duo, John Newman, welcome. We are co-hosts of a show called Keys to Success, which is live on the ThinkTech Live Network series weekly on Thursdays at 11 a.m. We're looking forward to seeing you then. Aloha. My name is Ray Tsuchiyama, and I'm from Kalihi Palama. Spent 20 years in Tokyo, Japan, came back after the Great Earthquake. I watch ThinkTech all the time and hope everybody follows it on the Internet because it is a program that is devoted to the future of Hawaii and brings all concerned citizens together to create a better society for all. Seven. We're back. We're live with Chris Lindsey, the title of our show here on ThinkTech Talks. His list to Lindsey goes to Los Angeles. That's where USC is. So let's do your slideshow and see what we have. This ought to be interesting. Okay, what's that? Okay. This is me speaking at the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C. This is where the Davidson Award ceremony was held and has been held for the past few years. So there's a couple winners. There's about 25 winners, but there's only three or four $50,000 winners. So we all give a talk on what our research was about to the rest of the winners as well as any other people that want to come. And former Davidson fellow laureates can also come and see what the current Davidson fellow... Oh, great. Great. One big happy family. And so I met a lot of very interesting and smart kids over there too. I'm sure. Yeah. Okay, let's... Next one. You mentioned that. Honu Nukai. Oh, Honu Nukai, yeah. Oh, Honu Nukai. Yeah. I can do it. That's the name of my camera system. So you can see in the bottom me holding it. That's a prototype. So it looks a little better than that now. That one looks a little rough. But this was at the International Science Fair. Is this the one in Ritz-Wemakin? No. This was at... In Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Oh, this is International Science Fair after the Hawaii Science Fair. Yeah. It sort of goes down... You won at the local level, at the Hawaii level, and went to the National International... So the kind of hierarchy of science fairs would be the school fair first, which is just presenting to your school. And the school decides who descended the district fair. So for Iolani, which was my high school, it's all of the HAIS, the Independent Schools. The highest, yeah. Yeah. And they have their own science fair, and then they decide two people to send into the International Science Fair. And also from the District Science Fair, you can also qualify for the State Science Fair, which was always one of my favorite events to go to each year. And then beyond that, and beyond that would be the International Science and Engineering Fair, which has many, many countries, over 70 countries represented every year. And all of the students are really, really smart, and they're competing a multitude of different categories. So mine was Environmental Science, and I won third place in my category for Environmental Science. What was your project? In that Ho Honukai project, where I built cameras and used them to look at underwater munitions around Hawaii. The mustard gas. Yeah, the mustard gas. Oh, a fly knife. Yeah, Pearl Harbor during the war, yeah. That's a Margo Edwards program, yeah. Yeah, she's my mentor, and unfortunately she couldn't be here today because she had a really bad sore throat. We'll catch her again. Yeah. We'll catch her again. Now, what about Ritsumekin? I'm confused. Ritsumekin is going to Japan, and you went there a number of times and participated in this science fair also. Yeah, so that was more of like a collaboration, like a just a get-together of science groups from, again, around the world. Much fewer, though, than in international science and engineering fair. But Ritsumekin is actually a project as a group. And that group project, we looked at sharks and their behavior around a Makai research pier over in Kanioa Bay. After that, I was actually connected to my current mentor, Dr. Margo Edwards. So that's how I met her and how I got started with all this other underwater time-lapse camera stuff. Here's a shout-out to Margo Edwards. She's fabulous. She knows how to mentor people and change their lives. Oh, yeah. Okay, Maestro, we need some more photographs now. Let's see what we got. All right, what do we got? What is that? Is that you? This is research in progress. So this was before my cameras went off of Waianae, about a few miles off the Waianae coast, and they went down, they got set down, and they looked at a mustard gas container from after World War II, which the army had dumped there because that was the normal way to get rid of munitions at that time. Yeah, they weren't thinking environment in those days. Yeah, so I wanted to see what kind of effect these munitions were having on the environment now, because we don't know if they're still leaking or if they're still having effect on the animals. So I set a camera up and just watched them for about a week, day and night, and looked at the animals' behavior over time. You designed the camera? Yeah, and built that pipe frame, and yeah. How deep did it have to go? So I had a couple of different iterations of the camera. The first one I made was actually housed in aluminum, half-inch thick aluminum with one and a half inch thick windows, and that's really robust, and that one could go down to about 500 meters. That's 1,500 feet. Yeah, which is 50 times the atmospheric pressure we're feeling now. So that was a really tough one. Even though the windows were so thick, one of them actually caved in a little bit on the way down, but fortunately the glass didn't completely fail. What's the pounds per square inch at 1,500 meters? I'm not entirely sure. It's something in the thousands. Do you want to calculate everything? No, I don't have one. It's probably about an elephant sitting on every square inch at you, though. What did you find in your inquiry? Yeah, so my cameras looked at these munitions over time, and they actually discovered lots of animals living on top of the munitions and favoring living on the munitions rather than living off the munitions. So these munitions are kind of forming artificial habitats and artificial reefs for the creatures down there. It's so interesting. All the contents have already leaked out, so they're not dangerous anymore. And now animals are living on them. I've seen octopuses, starfish, fish, all sorts of stuff. But it's a lesson, though. It's a lesson we shouldn't do that again. You definitely shouldn't put more toxins. You could put just like the stainless steel down there, but not what was in it. Yeah, yeah. Okay, well, let's go to the next picture. Oh, there's more. Oh, there's another one. Yeah, so this is a different frame you can see. This is not actually my camera frame. This is the NOAA's BOTCAM, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Foundation. It looks a lot like yours. Are they copying you? No, it's completely different. Yeah, so this one actually looks at a bottom fish population. So this one isn't designed to last for a very long time. This was on the NOAA ship that he Eolichai, and I was testing my camera housings to make sure they could go down to the proper depths. Which was? Which was for the PVC pipe plastic housings. I wanted them to go to around 200 meters, which they could. And I tested them thanks to NOAA's help. But I also did some work with their bottom fish population research, which is looking at the red snappers in the Maui Triangle, and seeing how many there are. Because right now, the way we determine how many fish there are in our environment is by looking at catch data. And catch data is nice, but it doesn't really help. Not very accurate. It doesn't really help because once you have the catch data, oh, all those fish aren't in the environment anymore. So because you caught them and you're eating them. So it's better just to take pictures of them and count them that way, which is what I was working on. OK, next picture. Oh, that's the famous Dr. Margo Edwards there. Yep, and my pink belt. Yeah, that's nice. This is at the Davidson ceremony again. She was there. She was meeting with a Pentagon to talk about extending the research with the discarded military munitions. So she happened to be in DC at the same time as my David So what a looking break to have her there. It's really symbolic. So we're all there, yeah. It was really nice. And I hope I made her proud. I think you did. You made all of us proud. OK, still we have a couple more. Oh, who is that? I know that man. This is Brian Schatz, the senator. And with the Davidson program, you actually got to meet the senators from your state and talk with them about specifically having education for gifted students. And students that excel in especially one area of study and trying to cultivate that interest and make it something big. That's great. That's great that he did. You made him proud too, I'm sure. I hope so. When I was saying earlier, you make us all proud. You're a star from Hawaii. We won as many stars as we could get. What else we got in the pictures? There's one. Again, another senator, Maisie Hirono. It's like Maisie Hirono and your mom, Holly Lindsey. Yeah, that's my mom too. She came up with me. I went up from USC, and my mom and my sister actually also went up to Washington, DC to watch the awards ceremony. Oh, that's great. Nice to have a supportive family. It's very important, especially if you're studying. Yeah. Even my physics teacher from USC was there too. He was in a meeting. He is actually one of the, my current physics teacher was one of the top brass for the International Science and Engineering Fair. So I actually had met him earlier when I did projects in physics and astronomy. When I went to a science fair in the International Science Fair in LA, the year before I started the Ho Honokai project. So that was kind of a funny coincidence to see there. What's his name? His name is Christopher Gould. I never met Christopher. I didn't like it. We got any more photographs or was that at all? Here we go. That's the award, huh? The two awards from my sister and I. Mine's on the left. Perfect, perfect. 2016 and 2009, yeah. Make us all proud. My sister, again, got hers in a heart performance though. Well, not the same thing. But then she ended up majoring in microbiology. So maybe I'll end up majoring in music. Maybe you can collaborate with a space biology. So let's talk about what you're studying right now as a freshman in USC. Are you the youngest guy in the class? Is that what it is? I might be the youngest. I'm not actually sure. I don't know of anyone younger than me. But yeah, I'm studying astronomy, astrophysics, as well as the environmental science. And I'm trying to take both sets of classes at the same time. 36 points a semester? It's 22 points a semester. Really? So it's not that much. That's a work load. It's not 36. But yeah, it's five and a half classes. That's a lot. I might get the chance to take environmental classes over the summer, actually. And USC has lots of great programs in environmental science. But you can go to Catalina Island up of LA and do environmental science research there. And you can also go to the Bahamas and do research there as well. And they have lots of little satellite campuses around. The Bahamas, yeah. Bahamas, probably nice in the summer. Oh yeah. So what happens from this point forward? Are you going to graduate early from USC? I don't think so. I could try really hard and take 36 units a semester. But no, I think that's asking for unnecessary pain. You're going to have a life too. But right now, I'm working in the astronomy research group. And they do a thing called heliosizmology. So when you think about the Earth and seismology research on the Earth, you're looking at plate tectonics and earthquakes and things like that, which is very important for disaster management and things like that. But on the sun, the heliosizmology, which is how the sun surface moves, dictates things like solar flares, which is also important for disaster management on Earth because solar flares causes big problems with satellites and with electric power grids. Radio reception and all that. Oh yeah. And so my group at USC uses a telescope on top of the Mount Wilson Observatory, which is about 20 miles north of campus up in the mountains. And they're looking at just the sun's brightness over time and trying to figure out what's going on just beneath the surface of the sun. You don't look directly into the sun, right? Yeah, I don't look at the telescope. We have an instrument that does that for us. Better yet, yeah. So the USC group is actually a part of a larger group of heliosizmology groups from around the world, all run by Cambridge University in England. This will give you a chance to collaborate with people all around the world. More even than Iolani, even. So we have a partnership with a group at Stanford University. And we do a lot of our data processing using Stanford computers, as well as the high performance computing center at USC. So you're only a freshman. Yeah. You're doing all this stuff. Wow, blown away. So what's your plan? I mean, you're a guy who does plan ahead. We know that and you're very focused. So you must have sort of a vision about where this is all gonna go for you. Yeah, well, hopefully I can continue the research with the astronomy group at USC and hopefully learn how to code better, to produce better data processing. Code, computer, you're doing that too? Yeah, and I'll hopefully get to use the larger telescopes up on Mount Wilson to do things like the Juno observations, like looking at Jupiter during the times of the Juno transits. And that'll be very interesting because I love nighttime astronomy especially. Although solar astronomy is fun too. Yeah, so hopefully I get to continue that and work hard in that group. And then maybe I'll do some environmental research on the side too. Hopefully I can get something together with that. But you know, a lot of researchers have sat in that chair actually and I find that, this is my observation anyway, that at some point in their career, and it's not when they're freshmen, it's later on, they connect up with some mentor or person who directs them, who focuses them on one major project and they stay with it. They continue to do research in that project. They become world experts in that project and keep doing that. I guess that hasn't happened exactly yet for you, but do you have any idea about where it's going? Yeah, I have a good mentor for astronomy at USC. He's really good. His name is Dr. Rhodes, Dr. Edward Rhodes, and he does the Helios Asthmology and he was actually one of the first ones to discover that the surface of the sun is moving in certain ways. And the entire star is kind of pulsating and by studying that you can learn more about things about solar flares. Should we be worried about the pulsating of the sun? No, it's been doing that for much longer than we've been around, so nothing to worry about. So is this, are you suggesting to me that maybe this is going to be an area of specialty for you? Yeah, so if I get really into solar astronomy, yeah, I definitely want to continue it for a while. And if you take a PhD, well, I shouldn't say it because I know as the days long you're taking a PhD and you have a number of PhDs and a number of scientific areas, but what areas would you consider doing that in? So I really love astronomy and I love especially observation, observational astronomy. So astronomy, lots of people just take the data and work on that and that's really difficult and really useful, but I especially like the actual taking of the data itself with the telescopes and in Hawaii, that's a really good place to be because I'm on a K and all that. All this suggests to me that there's an article in your future, are you thinking of that too? Are you thinking of writing an article trying to get in one of the big scientific journals? What do you think? Yeah, hopefully I can get published again. I was a co-author on astronomy and astrophysics and with the Ho Honokai Environmental Science Project, I wrote an article for the Marine Technology Science Journal, which was published about a year ago. So hopefully I can continue publishing things. Well, we'll be looking at the journal Science. What other journals should we be looking at? What do you favor? Yeah, still astronomy and environmental science, I can't really decide right now. What are the journals in those areas? Oh, so astronomy would be astronomy and astrophysics, A&A, that's the really popular one. I think it went all online now though, so I don't think it's a paper journey anymore. But in science in general, the biggest journal of course is nature. So hopefully one day I can get a paper in nature. Well, we'll be watching nature, you know. By the way, you know, I know you're friendly with your family and everything, wonderful family, your mother Holly and your dad Mark. Yeah. But are you available for adoption? Nope. Oh, according to my mom, probably yes though. Yeah, so. We have a lot of water with us. We're a lot of control here. I use too much electricity at home I think. Well, Chris, it's great to see you, great to catch up with you, I want to do it again. I know you're going to come back and see everybody and visit the old school, which you might still be in had you not dropped out. Yeah. And look around at the science, maybe the science fair even. And when that happens, I'd like to talk to you again and again and follow your trajectory here because you're part of Hawaii no matter where you go, what you do. And we want you to be successful and we want you to be a star. And I mean that in the triple sense. Thank you very much. Yeah. Thank you, Chris. All right. Yeah. Yep.