 You know, in every scientist there's an engineer, and I suppose you can say there's an engineer in every scientist, or is that the same thing? And that's why it's so important that we study the engineering school, Holmes Hall, at the University of Manoa. We, uh, University of Hawaii at Manoa, that one. And we, you know, from time to time, we talk to Sung Choi, who's the assistant dean over there, and we catch up with him about what they're doing, and we remind ourselves how important engineering is to, you know, science education, to STEM education. After all, the E in STEM, the middle name of STEM, is engineering. Um, and we want to, you know, encourage young people to study this area. We want them to build our state. You know, the middle name of infrastructure is engineering, too. When you think of, um, the times, for example, after statehood, engineers were critically important. Not the building infrastructure that's around us today. And let me add, um, that we still need to build it. We still need the engineers. What's more is that science is taking engineering to new levels, literally, in terms of drones, autonomous vehicles. And so all of that lives at the engineering school. All of it lives right there a few feet away from our esteemed guest, Sung Choi. Welcome. No, I live there. I don't live near there. I live there. Okay, okay, right. Moving up a really good subject, and I want to make a very quick explanation about STEM. This is the two-dimensional view you can have if you have a hard time understanding it, because STEM should be four-dimensional, right? It's got the three-dimensional thing, and it's based on time, so it has to be four-dimensional, right? So, easiest way to explain STEM, that technology in STEM should be equated to a flower that you see. A flower. Because flowers grow and die and they change. So it's the flower that you are being exposed to as a technology. And because it's a flower, you don't have to know the intricacies of STEM. You don't need to know the intricacies of the math, the science, or anything else, because you see it, you play with it. It's your cell phone. Uh-huh. You don't have to be an expert in STEM to understand how to use your cell phone. Yeah. If that wasn't the case, we'd only be selling about 10 million cell phones a year, and we wouldn't have all this competition, right? No, we have billions of cell phones a year. That's right. The reason I equate to a flower is the very important roots of the flower are the math, the science, the languages, the arts, athletics, if you want to put it, whatever else you want to put down as a feeding root to what you want that technology, a flower to be. Now, it's actually really interesting because we call it STEM, S-T-E-M. And guess what connects the roots to the flower? The STEM. The STEM. You heard it here. This is important to STEM. Which is the actual engineering aspect of implementation or transportation of those theories of the science and the math and making it possible and probable in the technology, which is what you see. Yeah. Very simple two-dimensional picture that should give you an idea as to what STEM is trying to influence. Even though it specifies on the science and mathematics, if we didn't have the English as we are doing right now, we would not be transmitting this to anybody else except you and me playing, I don't know, finger games or something. So it's very important that all the disciplines of what we consider education is taken into play. But the fact that those are the roots that you need to develop is what makes the STEM stronger, which is engineering, and makes the flower brighter or smelling better if you want. Ten years ago I had lunch with a group that included the vice mayor of Beijing. I said, Mr. Vice Mayor, it's wonderful that in China 29% of all the college graduates have majored in engineering. And that really makes for a better society, a better nation, a better player in the international economy. And he said, well, thank you very much. That's a very nice thought, except it's not 29%. It's 59%. And my guess is it's at least that much now. And so every kid, every student ought to have some engineering, don't you think, to live in the 21st century? You know, my opinion is engineering is a great discipline because it really takes many facets of what we call the roots, the disciplines that we need to know. And it makes it part of your working nature at all times. We can't create anything and have other people understand it. We can't communicate that to somebody else. So that's an important aspect. But we have to also think about the fact that if we dream something up, we have to analyze it for safety. We have to analyze it to make sure it works properly. In fact, we have to analyze it to make sure it's working, doing the right thing. You know, every time I come up here, we talk about autonomy, we talk about robots. And one of the discussion I had with one of our new graduate students was, where do we lie when it comes to the ethics of robotics? On how should a robot understand the difference between right and wrong? If you create a robot to kill, does it just kill? Or does it have a set of rules that it goes through to figure out what and when it kills? So in a very similar fashion, I'm sure we were originally created with some sort of a built-in DNA that says, thou shalt not kill randomly, right? But obviously we've forgotten about that. But there are ethics to all of this. There needs to be ethics to all of this. We had a guest there two ago who's working, I told you before the show, who's working on the self-driving car, which is so many companies are working on it and there's so much involved. And it will happen. It will happen. You know you're in this area. But what's interesting, what really struck me was that they, as well as doing the software, doing the material science and the sensors and all that, they also think about social policy. They think about the impact of the self-driving car on everything around us because they know how disruptive it is and they want to understand the impact. Well, I mean think about it. Self-driving cars, it's not really a difficult concept. The only reason we think of it as being difficult is because we are trying to put the self-driving car into an unstructured area. If we had a completely structured area where everybody or everything followed rules the way it was supposed to be precisely and accurately, we would have no problem. If there were only self-driving cars on the road and you are automatically told, rule number one, if you see something coming in front of you, you turn right. Absolutely no accidents. The only problem is the people that drive it, us, that are the unpredictable, unstructured aspects out there. If you get into a riling situation, I don't know if I'm going to turn right or left. That depends on which side of the bed I got up on that day, right? So that's where the accidents come to play. Automated systems will not have that problem. So when you talk about, are we that close to automating? I think we're already there. We just have to figure out how do we take some of this unstructured aspects out of the equation? If we can do that, everything would probably be automated. But there are very interesting issues around it. We are already there. In Pittsburgh, they have self-driving cars, but they always have a safety man. The safety man sits and doesn't do anything unless you get in trouble. It's like you're planes, right? Well, that's true. The planes fly themselves. When I see a picture of a safety car, you showed me one yesterday, I see engineering issues all over the place. And of course the software is very important, but in a sense, software and engineering are married now, aren't they? Oh yeah, oh yeah. If you think about engineering in terms of the separation of electrical, mechanical, civil even, and computer science or computer engineering, everything has to come into one place because it's not a distinct aspect where you're trying to create a larger mechanism that works separately. The reason I put all in civil engineering is you have to remember a lot of these structures are becoming very large. And I don't see if there's a difference between buildings or something like the satellite space station. They are a building that just happens to be flying around. So all the engineering disciplines come together and they need to be in harmony to work properly. And that's the whole part of this incremental engineering development. We're trying to get to that final product. Obviously if we didn't have bottlenecks like power sources, maybe we'll get to that dilithium crystal thing, we would have less of an engineering problem because a lot of our deficiencies that we see right now would be resolved right away. So where's the line? You know, yesterday we had the chief of research and innovation, VP research and innovation at UH with the whole university. He's talking about science. He's talking about research in science and innovation using the discoveries in that research. So question, where's the line between engineering if there is one? Maybe there is none anymore between engineering and science. So I believe there is really no line. Hawaii, traditionally in the University of Hawaii, has traditionally been a science school. We study astronomy, we study oceanography, and they used engineering as a support mechanism to enhance their studies. I think that role may be kind of reversing because now we have engineering, the robots, automation, the computers just gathering data, doing so much more than what they expected. The sensors, what the scientists had expected. A good example is a botanist usually sits there and watches a plant grow, and they go maybe every other day and measures and says, oh, this grew two millimeters. Oh, this grew four millimeters. This is over a week. If you put a camera to it in the way an engineer would do it, it would be, we'll just measure it every 30 seconds. And we got more data than you could ever think of. So the botanist's first question when we did this one was, what do I do with all this data now? Because it's way more than what we were expecting. Now maybe that data gives him other theories to work on. Yes, that's right. Why things happen. Now at that point, because of the efficiency and the effectiveness that engineering has brought to this science, it's creating a change in how they look at that science. So they have to be married at some point. You were an assist to everything. That's right. You can't do these experiments. You can't gather this data. You can't, again, sensors. You need engineers to do that for you. You're the enabler. That's what you are. You're an enabler. Well, you may not only be the enabler, because when you get that technology and that engineering aspects to a point that is gone beyond, like for the botanist, that they're collecting more data than they know what to do with it, it's changing how that science is being looked at. So it has to be a marriage between the two. Including medicine, by the way. Of course. One of our staff, who is one of your students, went last year to, I think, UCLA for a summer intern program. And as an engineer, he was working at the medical school there, doing medical projects using, I guess, biomedical engineering. That's right. That's really an interesting connection, because at a microscopic level, it's engineering. It's physics, it's engineering. Well, microscopic, as was macroscopic, because if you look at biomedical, one of the first things that should come to your mind is something like a terminator or a humanoid, because you're creating prosthetics that are mechanized and automated that will help you live closer to what you were before you lost an appendage or something. So what are you getting there? I want to take a break for a moment, Sung Choi. And I want to come back and talk about the events that you are having in celebrating engineering coming soon this spring. And see where we are in terms of connecting all this with the other activities in the community and in other scientific areas. That's Sung Choi, assistant dean of Holmes Hall, the School of Engineering, College of Engineering at U.H. Manoa. We'll be right back. I'm Ethan Allen, host of likeable science here on Think Tech Hawaii. Every Friday afternoon at 2 p.m., you'll have a chance to come and listen and learn from scientists around the world. Scientists who talk about their work in meaningful, easy to understand ways. And you'll come to appreciate science as a wonderful way of thinking, way of knowing about the world. You'll learn interesting facts, interesting ideas. You'll be stimulated to think more. Please come join us every Friday afternoon at 2 p.m. on Think Tech Hawaii for likeable science. With me, your host Ethan Allen. Aloha and happy new year. It's 2017. Please keep up with me on Power Up Hawaii, where Hawaii comes together to talk about a clean and just energy future. Please join me on Tuesdays at 1 o'clock. Mahalo. 11 o'clock rock here with Sung Choi on Think Tech Tech Talks. And we're talking about have you hugged your engineer today, among other things. So, you know, we've really, that was an interesting discussion in the previous part of the talk show. But going now through the connection, I mean, one thing comes to mind to me, you're going to have an insert in the newspaper? Oh yeah, yeah. What is that about? So, every year, because February 19th to the 25th, so of course the dates were changed but usually the last week in February is engineers week and it corresponds with fall people, George Washington, who happened to be a tinkerer and as a tinkerer and inventor, he is an engineer, right? Boy, that puts it out really early. That's right. So, starting next week, there's a lot of events that honor and bring light to engineering and how it's such an integral part of society like you mentioned. And on the 18th, we actually have a vex tournament at Windward Mall on Saturday and starts, I believe, at 9.30 and goes until about 12.30. They also, I believe, have engineering exhibits where many of the companies have their displays out and that may also be on the 19th, which is a Sunday. And on the 20th, we actually have the 2017 Hawaii vex IQ state championship at the Hawaii Convention Center and that is open to the public where many of the middle and elementary school teams that have actually won regional tournaments in the state of Hawaii are coming up to see who will go to Louisville, Kentucky to compete in the world championships. A vex. A vex. Okay, well, what is vex? A vex is a scholastic robotics program. It has a lot of similarities to some of the first Lego and other programs that you may have seen. But because of its lower cost, it attracts many, many students to this competition. One of the goals that I had when I talked to you a long time ago and we started bringing robotics in 1999 was to see if we can get some sort of 100% inclusion of all the schools. We're not quite there yet, but we are getting there. And if you have time, we suggest you come out and watch some of these tournaments and cheer your favorite teams on and maybe even take it back to other family members so we can have that growth by word of mouth. So they can come down. Anybody can come down. Anybody can come down free. This is all day on the 20th of February, which is a holiday, which is, I believe, President's Day. Coming very soon. And it's at the convention center. It is President's Day. Not all presidents, just some presidents. Never mind. Anybody that had that title. And of course, because it's engineers, we have other things during that whole week. So on the 21st, there's actually a Society of American Military Engineers luncheon with some people talking. On the 22nd, we've implemented our College of Engineering Career Fair. Oh, yeah. That's very important. That's right. If you want to be an engineer, you should spend time there. So a good plug in for this is it's not only for our College of Engineering students. If you are interested as a company or even just as an individual trying to figure out what some of these companies are looking for, you're more than welcome to come. It's between one o'clock and four o'clock. It's at the Manoa Campus Center, a ballroom, and it's open to the public. Oh, that's nice. That's plenty of space, sir. We want people to stop by. This year, I believe, we have 78 companies coming. So surprisingly, even though the university has its own career fair, our College of Engineering Career Fair usually ends up being larger than majority of these. And the good news is that you'll be at each of these events. Won't you, Sung Choi? I'm going to try. Okay, we'll see. Now, if you want to meet Sung Choi, just go to these events and he'll be there and he'll talk to you. So the last one I want to mention as part of this thing is, there are other events going on. Many of our engineering societies are having outreach events that highlight engineering. But on the 25th of February, which is Saturday, we actually have an engineering week banquet and they will honor people like the Lifetime Achievement Award, Engineer of the Year, Young Engineer, and of course for us, we always honor a student engineer of the year award. And if you haven't, you can go check some of the internet webpages or I think it's H-C-E-S-Hawaii.us and you can look at all this stuff. But it's quite a thing when we have about 250 engineers plus some of their family members show up. And let me put it in a plug-in. The person that developed Touchrists, Hank Rogers, will be talking about dreaming big. Oh, he's good for that. Yeah, because that is some of the things that we are trying to promote. How can I go? I mean, is there a site or someplace I can sign up? The H-C-E-S, the Hawaii Console of Engineering Society's website will have a page that you can go in and log in. The other thing is, for yourself, well, you got these, call me. I'll call you. And I believe there is another event. I believe there is a showing of a film called Think Big at the Ward Theater. That's great. And it's on engineering. And I believe it's the 23rd of February. So we're trying to highlight a lot of our engineering profession. Really getting out there. Yeah, yeah. So we're trying to populate these days. So you'll figure out some way to get exposed to engineering. You know, of course, you know, my involvement with the Department of Education, we're trying to constantly have people understand engineering better. These robot tournaments and everything, it's not to get people to understand robotics in a year or six months. It's to, number one, expose students, because we live in pretty much nowhere. We are the most isolated place on Earth. So we're trying to expose new technologies, new careers, new disciplines to young students. We also want to use things like this, robotics to encourage students to look further into these disciplines. And then, of course, we want the teachers to educate them. And then with the education, we want the teachers to empower the students to learn on their own. And of course, we've always left one aspect, which I decided to add. And that's the final one, which is expectation. And that's expectation on two sides from a teaching side. I have very specific expectations about where I want my students to go. But at the same time, I think it's important to understand that the students need to have expectations as to where they're going to end up at the end of that rainbow. There's no part of goal at the end of the rainbow. Why go on that rainbow? So we need to develop that industry here. Whether it's the Alumni Association working with the College of Engineering to create more high-tech industry or having somebody with a lot of capital like the Omidiers or the Ellicens come in here and create new industries. Then you have entrepreneurship. You have a company. That's right. You take the engineering ideas and you make them into what manufacturing or otherwise you make money with them. Maybe a lot of money. That's right. So what Vassilis, also our colleague, electrical engineer was talking about with the innovation and entrepreneurship, it is a way of bringing everything into a full circle. We're trying to create industry and we're trying to create the people that are going to be working in that industry and hopefully there is a nice merger that takes place where we won't be losing all our intelligence to other places like people feared. It's the profession. If you build a profession there's a certain magnetism about that and people want to stay with their colleagues. They want to form companies. They want to practice engineering with their colleagues. Well, I mean you know what you and I have always talked about. We don't want Hawaii to be that old seeing of the gateway to the east and the west. We want Hawaii to be the center of excellence in engineering for people to come here. And we want them to come here and also enjoy what nature has to offer. I mean we have the best there. We have the best beaches. We have the best service. But you know what, the most important thing to a professional and to an engineer is being with colleagues, sharing intellectual ideas, sharing things that they learned in school taken further, taken into that center of excellence. Well, that brings up another point. So April 20th, we have our College of Engineering banquet, annual banquet which attracts about a thousand people. My God, are you having the things going on? We have many, many things. You know, we were talking about engineering alumni a couple days ago and I realized College of Engineering is 109 years old this year because we were established in 1908, one year after UH Manoa and I was trying to throw out numbers and I was like, we must have graduated about 10,000 people and assuming a certain percentage has passed away, a certain percentage is not living here anymore, I still think there must be about 5,000 College of Engineering graduates. Still around, still part of the profession. So we want to see our banquet have more of this colleagues and old friends. Yeah, that's great. See what's going on. Much more than the sum of the parts. But before we run out of time, I want to talk about the science fair. Coming in April and every time I go to the science fair and I go every year, I always see you there. I always interview you there. I always enjoy your energy there and you are dedicated, completely dedicated to the science fair. Let's talk about that. So the science fair, in my opinion, is a little bit different than these robotics type aspects. Robotics is more group activities, working together, understanding the teamwork, understanding really the communication aspect of how to work together. Now when I look at the science fair, it's a little different. It's like giving you a spoon and saying, dig your way to China. Because you have to understand that research involves the dedication of constantly digging to find that answer. And that's a different aspect of your personal development in terms of science and engineering. Yes, you got the group effect, but you have to also be that expert of one, right? You can be Jack of all trades, but you have to be a master of one. And we want people to understand that. And we want to take that mastery and your expertise in an area and combine it with this other teamwork group, doing a big project aspect, and come up with new ideas and disruptive ideas that are going to change. One of the most disruptive ideas I've seen has to be the way business is done through Uber. What a different concept. It is. We live in a world that's changing all the time. And what I get out of this is that kids, especially kids in Hawaii who we know and love, and you can see that Song is an excellent educator, a kind and engaging man for kids. You know, there's two things. One is they have to see that science can solve huge problems. That's right. And two is they can be involved in science and solve those problems. And they can and should have the confidence. That's the science fair to me. They develop confidence. They can not only do it, but they can leverage it elsewhere. They can talk to people. They can spread the word about their science and their discoveries. And thus they can participate in a world process, making a better world. There's no better psychic benefit than that, aside from the money. So, you know, when you see them all together in April at the science fair, at the convention center, it really is a pitter pat for me. Oh, it is. And I know it is for you. I know how excited to hear about it. So what we should do is we should put in a plug right now saying all the engineering scientists that are out there as professionals, they should all be participating as judges so you can give that one encouraging comment that may end up being the student that finds the answer for cancer or finds the answer for energy. It's more than just the scientific projects. It's a discovery for those kids. It's a statement of confidence in those kids. It's a huge statewide collaboration, a process of coming together. And you're always involved. And I really appreciate that. I'm always glad you're there as well. Yeah, thank you, son. You'll come down again anytime you want.