 Welcome back to Think Tech. I'm Jay Fidel. That's Dora Nakafuji. She's an educator with Kamehameha Schools, and she joins us today to talk about career pathways in Hawaii for students and everyone else, and also, you know, where the future lies for us, for science, for technology, you know, with a kind of look at what we have available and whether we're making good use of it. Hi, Dora. Good morning. Good morning, Jay. Are you? Hi. Nice to see you. You did a great show with Tower Gardens last week, and Wendy Lowe. That was really fabulous. I really enjoyed that. Thank you for doing that. Oh, thank you for hosting. It was really the Wendy show, so I just kind of rode along. Take back your health, wasn't it? Anyway, so let's talk about education. Let's talk about, you know, being innovative and using the assets we have and building not only the sense of resilience, you know, in the economy and in our capacity, in our way of looking at things, but also a sector that can make money and take care of us and give our kids the opportunity to stay here and have good careers, career pathways. So have we got that now, Dora, or are we missing that now? Well, you know, and thanks for having this topic bring me brought up too at this time. I think it's a very appropriate time, and yes, I'm currently working at Kamehameha schools. I'm not a teacher, but in various respects, I think we're all students and teachers in every way, right, because we're always learning and we're always learning new things and teaching our own children or teaching our own ourselves. I think that's all very important that continuous learning. What I've been finding very exciting over the last several months, especially when we've been contending with the COVID crisis is how everyone is continuously learning and this whole medical jargon of COVID is something that everyone's getting much more familiar with. And so from a technology standpoint, I think Hawaii has a lot of a lot of opportunities given that we're an isolated, you know, so what to do with this, Dora? Are you saying that, you know, whatever we have, COVID will incentivize us to make it better. Whatever we have it in the schools, whatever we have in such sciences, we are now practicing and researching and discovering that COVID will somehow help us focus on that. Are you saying that? I think COVID has given us time to really try new things. I think this is a time where the status quo way of doing things isn't necessarily going to get us out of the crisis. And so we are definitely coming up with and people all around me. Look at how we've transitioned and pivoted in education to remote learning. I mean, it's hybrid learning, but it's also remote learning. And everyone embraced that. Yes, it was a struggle at the beginning, but now everyone's getting onto digital platforms, students are helping teachers learn about using different types of multimedia, social media, and the communication channels are really kind of being utilized. The other thing that's really interesting too is it's uncovering where our infrastructure might not be quick enough to help us adapt to these kinds of new technologies. And so that's another area that I think has a lot of opportunities. And certainly something that many of us have been working for several decades on trying to transform our local infrastructure, create that new modernization, that new technologies that can actually help us be more efficient, reduce our costs of doing business here and also bring in new skill sets that we need here permanently here in the islands. And I think it's something that's an exciting opportunity. We're trying to see that shift in the current paradigm. So it's more than just having a little extra time, although that certainly is part of it. It's sort of building a kind of type A approach to things and saying, hmm, I think our regular, our normal is threatened by COVID. So I want to improve our life in COVID to be better, to be more like normal. And I'm willing to put the energy into that. I mean, I think this process is happening all over the country. For example, for example, restaurants. There was an article in The New York Times this morning about the new model of restaurant that is happening all over the place on mainland. I'm not sure it's happening here. Maybe it is to some extent. And actually it was one big Mexican chain, Mexican food chain that's doing this. So there is no restaurant in restaurant. There is only a kitchen. And you walk in there and you take pickup or they deliver to you. Okay, and what's the sophisticated part of that? You guessed it, the website. You get on the website, you buy your food in advance. It's easy, it's quick, it's automatic, you can have an account. It remembers your preferences in burritos versus enchiladas, whatever. Okay, the whole thing is instantaneous. You can get on a meal plan. I mean, all these things really could have done before. But now in the time of COVID, we're thinking, how can we make this more efficient? And I'm sure the people putting the money into these new model of restaurants and chains for that matter, they're looking to the future. They're not assuming that in six months or a year, this is going to go away. This is a new model of competitive restaurant we will have with us going forward. And I think that kind of adaptation, that kind of innovation is what we're talking about, isn't it? I have to agree, and I think it's allowing us to do a lot more of that learning and prototyping and then quickly checking out, is this going to help us get what we need done? Because I think this, it's really strange, we've been at it for eight months now and COVID hasn't really changed and we've gone on to, this is our third cycle. So I really do think that the learnings that we've gotten so far, the data that we've learned from other states, other countries, it's helping us be much more adaptive, especially here in Hawaii. And I think what we're finding is that our environment is ready. People are receptive for the changes that are going to bring new ways of doing things. What is our environment, you say? That's interesting, I want to drill down on that. For example, I always believe for a long time that Australia, for example, it's remote, it's certainly remote from the UK and because it's an island and so remote and so far away, it has a different way of looking at things, a different view of innovation, a different view of many things. And actually that helps, it's not stuck in something. So I've come to believe that islands are different. An island state is different than say, Nevada or Florida. An island state, you have to be self-reliant to some extent. We grew up in that, we Hawaii grew up in that. And now we have a kind of a local culture of mindset that makes us look inward to a certain extent. We depend on each other, hopefully. We don't depend on external cargo cope. We have a way of looking at things that actually helps us in innovation. Do you agree? I agree to some degree. I do believe that our efficiencies and our ability to do things as an island, we have to be self-contained in certain things, like agriculture, like our environment for growing. It is something that right now the statistics say we're importing 90% of our foods and 10% grown here. Well, there's definitely a lot of opportunity for us to be much more efficient in the way we grow things and the way we produce things. Now we have to also reduce the cost of doing business here. And that is completely dependent upon the imports and the market structure that are outside affecting that. So in some ways we have to have that symbiotic relationship with the internal and the external, the balance of the two. We cannot just say, hey, we're going to shed our own borders and we're going to have everyone do their own thing here. I don't know if that is a realistic picture for the future because just as electricity was brought to Elani Palace way before it was brought to Washington, DC, it is something that is indicative of the culture here. But there is that learning, but it's also finding the technology that's right and appropriate for our place. Being an island, we have to be that much more cognizant of the upstream and the downstream impacts of whatever we do. I think that's where our infrastructure, our infrastructure, our technologies that we bring here to the islands need to have that much more well-rounded awareness. I always say that upstream and downstream, it's really kind of a 360 view because whatever we bring here, we have to figure out its life cycle and how to even get it off the island when it's met its, you know, serve its useful purpose. Yeah, true. Nothing is forever. Or at least some things are forever and other things are not necessarily forever. So, you're a scientist. You're a PhD scientist. How does that help you analyze this? What's your area of study? How does that make you different from ordinary people? Yeah, so I'm actually trained as an aeromechanical engineer. So I'm basically an aerospace, aeronautical engineer. A lot of people say, oh, you just developed planes. And I'm like, well, not really. I mean, if you think about an aircraft, it is a flying city. It has everything from structural, electrical, power, sanitary. We even have to know how the plumbing works in the bathroom. There's food, comfort, aesthetics, air quality, everything. So making, and that's where I kind of got the bug for flying was really about having grown up. Actually, I was introduced to the aviation field really early on in high school. And I think as far as career pathways go, it was really through my counselor in school that said, oh, you're good in math and science, but what do you want to go? What do you want to do? And I'm like, I don't know. I was a high school senior. I don't know where I want to go. But so he introduced us to these career pathways. And it was an opportunity to really kind of see what else was out there and see how the rest of the workforce and everyday life and these everyday infrastructure that we see and are exposed to every day, we need to learn about how they work. Not just take advantage of them or use them, but also understand how they work. And so having an opportunity to be working for the airlines, I was introduced to customer service. That was my first real job. And then from there, I was exposed to engines and mechanics and flight crew and all this stuff. And I realized, wow, this is really an exciting opportunity to learn more. And they all encouraged me to continue on my learnings. Not that they didn't want me to work. It was just that they said, hey, if you want to learn more about this, let me show you this. They were excited to teach me. They were very excited to show me. And then when I went into school, I realized, wow, this is a lot of stuff to learn. But at the same time, there... And I worked as I went to school. So I was continuously shown how people are actually using what engineers design. So I became an engineer, but I was also inspired by all the people who use technology and getting feedback. That kind of two-way interaction, that kept me going. Because as an engineer, you're gonna do a lot of math and science and doing problems all day long and all that stuff. It can get boring and it can also get very tedious. But the motivator to understand that foundational science and really be grounded with the physics and all of those skill sets was really so that we could come back out and look at what are the things that means maybe some innovation or design or technology to help and make it easier for people. To hear about what people need and help them with what they need to do their jobs. I've always thought that Hawaii was a state in terms of the culture of the state. It was an early adapter state. I mean, you go back to the electricity at the palace, early adapter stage. And everybody wanted to have it soon and first. And whatever the new model was, let's have it. But at the same time, it was a kind of consumer science. In other words, let's buy the package. Let's buy it as it works and we'll use it will be great consumers. But we won't be designers and we won't know what's inside. And as you say, how we can innovate a better model. You're talking about innovating a better model. You're talking about unpacking it and seeing what's inside. And that's different than just being a consumer. And I think that's where you're coming from. Am I right about that? Yeah, I think you put it way better than I did in terms of unpacking this process. And I think this is an opportunity for us because now we're talking about changing the landscape of how we do a lot of things, whether it's energy, agriculture, how we bring things to the islands, really is going to define our new infrastructure going forward because a lot of our infrastructure is aging. So a lot of our designs were built probably from the 1940s, 1950s during a different era. And today we're in the 2020s, right? So when we look at our technology and what we have in the field, that is an opportunity for us to bring modernized infrastructure here. Maybe just bring it up to 1990s quality. And that will help us. I don't have to tell you anything you don't know. That's 30 years ago, Dora. But that will help us transition. And I think there's a lot of transitions that need to happen. I think from a technology standpoint, one of the things that engineers tend to forget about is the psychology of change. And just like on an airplane, you change that screen that everybody loves and you give them something else, they're going to go, what is this? And if it's going to help them relax, it's going to help them to enjoy that experience coming from wherever to Hawaii, flying that five hour gap from West Coast to here. And they're going to be entertained by their next two programs. Hey, you know what? They're going to enjoy that trip that much better. It's not about what you showed them, it's about how they enjoyed it. So who are the innovators? Is everybody an innovator? Do you have to be trained to be an innovator? How do I infuse a sense of innovation into you so that when you enter the workforce, you will actually innovate things? I mean, is it for a few or the many? Oh, I think it's for the many. I mean, it's got to be for the many. And I think people play different roles. And we just recently had the Lacey Beach Day of Discovery on October 24th. And that was really an opportunity where we brought together people from all sectors, science, engineering, navigators on the ocean and actual spacefarers, people that are traveling and living in the International Space Station. We also had community folks that are working in different jobs all over the world who are graduates from here from Hawaii and they wanted to partake in sharing of that information. So that those kinds of efforts, we bring back knowledge from elsewhere. And then gives us a glimpse of what our future might look like. So everyone I think has a role. The other thing is, you know, back when, at least when I went to school, it was not multidisciplinary. You studied chemistry or you studied biology and the two did not necessarily mix. They were not related. There was no connection, there was no interaction. Each one was in its own silo, but that's not possible anymore. Not in the world of science as it has emerged. It's all about collaboration between disciplines, multidisciplinary and it's all about collaboration between scientists in various places who are working on various things, you know? Like for example, Moderna came up this morning in the paper with a new candidate for a vaccine and they're pretty well advanced on it. And it's 94.6% effective as opposed to the Pfizer which was only 90% effective last week. And I'm saying, wouldn't it be better to have all these guys collaborate? We need global collaboration, you know, World Health Organization and the like. And I think we've seen that happen. And I think that's part of what you're talking about, isn't it? We have to collaborate in groups around the country, the world. We have to collaborate among disciplines in science between energy. You have lots of experience in energy, aviation and of course in growing things. All these things connect. They can all help each other, am I right? Yes, the collaboration is key in partnerships across the communities because no one person knows everything, right? And so the thing that we try to teach the students and at least my kids too is like, you have to leverage what other folks around you can bring to the table. And it's funny because we have a course called optimization, right? And optimization isn't about one parameter, one thing. And so much here on the island, you have to optimize it for a whole collection, you know? And that whole solution at the end of the day doesn't optimize on any one parameter, but you optimize it for the actual needed that you want. So your solution at the end of the day may be very different if you optimize on a parameter, like a lot of folks optimize around costs. But that's all you want. It will look very, very different than when you optimize around what you want. Clean energy, you want community impact, and you wanna bring down costs. That solution that addresses a multiple means is gonna look very, very different. And you have to have those folks at the table. I think that's some very important things being an engineer is that you have to always be looking and listening to what people want. A lot of it is product development. This reminds me of design thinking out of Stanford. You know, Ocean is in a partnership with Kamehameha Schools for various things, including AI, education, and the like. Ian Keddejima there, you must know him. And you know, what's interesting about, you know, what they do is they're, when they do design thinking, they're not looking for a specific function they're trying to find out what's really useful. And they start from the usefulness and work back. And it comes out differently. It's not the problem you thought it was. It's a different problem. And thus it's a different solution. And thus people actually use it. This is part of modern science, isn't it? Absolutely. And I think that these career pathways that we're talking about for many of the students, you may start in a particular pathway or direction, but you realize that, hey, what you're learning actually can cross over into another sector. And that actually has so many other additional pathways that you'd never have imagined. Cause you know, the applications are that much broader. A lot of times, you know, my kids always ask me, it's like, well, you studied in this area, so how are you applying it today? Well, like I said, aircraft is almost a flying city. You have every facet that you can imagine on it. And so a lot of what I do today, we might be working with communities such as farmers and growers. And we're looking at ways to kind of improve their ability to grow. Well, side by side growing is one of those platforms. I mean, I always tell kids as they imagine growing and farming in an air conditioned environment. And then they're all looking at me going, what, you know, some things can grow in a more controlled environment. Cause we have now in space, on the international space station, we have aeroponics, hydroponics where things are growing side by side. So that technology of how you grow or the science of how you grow is still just as relevant here on earth as it is in space. So- It brings it all together, doesn't it? It brings it all together. Aviation, space, environment, you talk about environment, you talk about thinking out of the box, you talk about Hawaii's special place in the sun because we know about agriculture. And then of course, wouldn't it be wonderful if we could do that, the kind of thing that you guys were talking about on the tower garden, where you don't have to worry about the problems in using soil. And you can develop techniques to grow things in space on Mars What have you? I'm thinking of the movie Mars. I'm sure you watched that. So my point is, we have all these things coming together. Now we know what's in the soup. Query, what are you doing about that? What are you doing in Stacey Beach? What are you doing in Kamehameha Schools? What are you doing with kids to infuse a sense of discovery on agriculture, indoor agriculture, aquaponics and so forth? Yeah, so one of the things that we have is this tower garden, which is an example of a platform. And we have a couple of slides that shows kind of the side by side growing where you can actually see a tower that's growing kale next to a farmer who's growing kale in the field. It's not one or the other, it's both. You actually need it in both environments because we have a lot of folks living in urban environments who may not be able to, as I don't wanna call it a food desert because we are much closer to our farms than some of the other states. But the example is that you can actually now show these platforms in our educational spaces where the teacher is learning from industry. Industry can actually help the teacher train the next generation so that they can be inspired to learn about these new jobs that are gonna be out in our communities because our farmers are learning to grow differently. They're still growing in the field, but we also have these types of platforms. Our children also become teachers. They help the next generation learn. So when we harvest from these kinds of towers, there's an opportunity to also share with them and share those produce from the, that they've grown to the community. Food safety, shipping, all those things that are part of the market, that upstream and downstream that I was talking about, all can be then introduced with industry sector playing together with the educators. We also have opportunities to not only look beyond agriculture, agriculture being one of the infrastructures that we do care about for these career, sorry, these businesses and economies that are important here in Hawaii, but tourism is also very important. And one of the things that you think about for tourism is you have aircrafts, right? And so in order to get that playing here, we need mechanics, we need aircraft mechanics. And so one of the examples of the images that we've shown is side by side, we learn about jet propulsion. We know about all the pneumatics and all of the things that you need to do in order to maintain an engine, but we can actually cross over into what we're looking at now, which is really diversified energy sources, fuel resources, not just fossil, not just renewables, but maybe hydrogen as another technology. So our cars and our car fleets are now looking at electric and fuel cell powered vehicles. That is a whole other sector. Imagine getting a hydrogen vehicle and not having a lot of infrastructure here that we need in order to jumpstart that economy. So understanding electricity and understanding those kinds of new modern power systems is, they're all opportunities for us to work together. Well, and not only opportunities, but they have a direct and possibly a profound effect on our economy. I mean, we're looking forward to a time when tourism may not be what it was. We're looking forward to a time we may have to be self-reliant or more self-reliant in growing our food. And the old notion of the plantation with all that work out there and the soil and the issues about growing crops that you may not be able to eat. You have to ship it out. You have to export it. Diversified agriculture, truck farming agriculture. We really haven't paid attention to that. But with these new technologies, maybe we can and maybe the next generation will go and do that. Furthermore, in terms of energy, we have issues about energy. We really better reduce the cost of energy, reduce the efficiency of our energy generating systems, all those things. And they have a direct effect on our economy and thus our future, as well as jobs. And these are all our social, I call these our social infrastructures, right? They're essential for us living here on the islands. And yes, there is a degree of that that we can actually begin to be more self-reliant here on the islands and be able to reuse. Now, is it gonna be a hundred percent? Does it have to be? That's the question, right? And maybe it doesn't have to be. Maybe it will always be a blend. But so long as we understand how it is integrated into the fabric of our society, doesn't mean that we have to forget about the past. It's really about looking towards the future. And here's kind of that's the other thing that I always think about. I was, our kids, they weren't, they're, I know it's taking us navigating across the oceans as navigators on the ocean. So from the land to the ocean, we also have spacefarers that are going into space. And so how do we explore that arena? I mean, that's an arena that really will require international collaboration. And no one person's gonna know everything up there because you're gonna have to live together. You're gonna have to work together in order to survive. That environment is the most extreme. So the big question, the big question is how you and your situation with your background education, training, experience in aviation and energy and now in commandment schools. How do you make this happen? How do you A, make these kids, make these appreciate science and learn the basics of fundamental points of science, even in silos. And then how do you make them collaborate? And how do you give them the vision that they can and should improve our sustainability, improve our economy, improve our world and why? How do you make that happen? I know that's a hard question here at the end of our show but take a whack at it, would you Dora? Well, I think every one of us, when we wanna learn something, you gotta have to make it fun. And you have to make it purposeful. And you hopefully have that deep grounding that the values are there so that that next generation will care. And that isn't just about a technology, that is about making that person whole. And that's, that is the complete person that if they're gonna go out into any industry, any sector, any place in the world, they're gonna be, or even out of this world in space, they're gonna be ready to cope. I think that's the kind of resilience that we're gonna need in our future generations, our future leaders and our future as all humanity going forward. I think that's gonna be a very challenging aspect of all the education, I mean, culture, tradition, that's all gonna have to matter to you. Yeah, so how do you change? In order to achieve that, you gotta educate kids and you gotta give them exposure, time together and time to learn, time to collaborate, time to teach their teachers. I love that part, to teach their teachers, who in turn can teach them, you know? So how do you do that? I mean, that's a different educational paradigm, isn't it? Yeah, and I think that that's part of why this whole digital media kind of thing with COVID is really interesting right now because we're now learning from all over the world, industry and through some of the, you know, Lacey Beach Day of Discovery, we're doing these virtual field trips and there's a lot of online learnings that are being offered. Now, I don't want to spend all the time online and so that's why some of these things, you know, if we can have platforms that folks can actually utilize in their own environments, it's almost like a lab at your own home or a lab in your school environment. When we return back to school, it may be that there's certain activities we have to do at school, that what makes it purposeful there. So we have to return to those environments and be able to connect the students and the learnings to purpose. I think that making it purposeful, impactful. The first thing is to make sure that it impacts them. I like the growing is because you can immediately eat that stuff. And so we're already seeing kids wanting to do more of it because they see how that benefits them. Now, the space technology and other things like, you know, maybe hydrogen and all those other things, when the vehicles come that uses hydrogen, that will be another connection point where then folks can learn more about that technology. But I think as part of strategy and transformation, we always are looking for that cutting edge that next, you know, before it becomes mainstream, how do we stay in front of that to be scouts out there and looking for that next greatest thing to kind of bring back? Does it make sense for us here in Hawaii to have it to help us solve some of our current day problems? It may not be a problem, but it may be an opportunity. And I think that's, those are all things that a lot of these kids are looking for these new opportunities, right? To kind of spread their wings and try things out and do it in an environment where you still have the values because their families are strong in that or the culture and they have mentors that bring that with them, but you also have the opportunity to try. I think that's where schools, our communities, our internships, all these things are helping to bring those kinds of skill sets where you can explore and try. Yeah. But do it safely and have some mentoring and, you know, interning opportunity. A perfect laboratory. It's a laboratory. It's a laboratory to get these kids excited and you're right in the middle of it, Tara. Thank you so much for sharing with us. I don't think our conversation is over. There's much more to discuss about this and much more to watch as we go forward. Dora Nakafuji, MIMAS Schools and Educator and a Scientist helping us understand the future, actually the future of Hawaii. Thank you so much, Tara. Thank you. Thanks for this time.