RESEARCH - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Director of Federal Relations for UH System
Through his Silicon Valley investing experience and as managing director of the UH Foundation's Upside Fund I and II, a small seed venture capital fund that invests in UH research with commercial potential, Weinman also encouraged UH to create an accelerator, an entity that provides advice and resources to aspiring businesses, specifically designed for its faculty, student and alumni to bring their innovative research successfully to market.
Heeding to his advice, in September 2015, UH launched XLR8UH, a four-month startup program that works with UH-affiliated entrepreneurial teams to offer office hours, weekly workshops, presentations and lectures conducted by noted business, technology and startup experts, with up to a $175,000 investment from UH for eligible teams. Since that time, XLR8UH with Weinman as board member, has mentored, educated, and inspired more than 40 startup ventures with 24 matriculating out of the program-generating, in total more than $5 million in revenue, and raising more than $30 million in funding.
"As a strong proponent of UH research, Barry was familiar with the university's existing strengths in astronomy, healthcare, ocean science and energy," said XLR8UH Managing Director Omar Sultan. "He was confident that UH could take advantage of these distinctive strengths to create innovative solutions that could yield significant commercial value in the marketplace."
Weinman, shaking hands with UH President David Lassner, is honored at the 2017 UH Foundation Celebration of Philanthropy event at the Culinary Institute of the Pacific. UH Foundation Board Member Mike May, left, and JABSOM Dean Jerris Hedges proudly look on.
David Michael Karl, world-renowned oceanography professor at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa (UH Mānoa), has contributed to some of the world's most pivotal oceanographic discoveries, including the hydrothermal vents in the Galapagos Rift, a thriving food web in the frigid waters of Antarctica, and the development of widely adopted analytical methods to better understand ocean life and biochemistry. Most notably, he is known for helping to establish an open ocean time-series station, known as Station ALOHA, that has produced essential ocean scientific data over the past 30 years. At Station ALOHA, Karl and colleagues have provided the most convincing evidence of decreasing ocean pH (so-called "ocean acidification"), that is the result of increasing CO2 in the atmosphere (from fossil fuel burning), and its uptake into ocean waters over time.
On the other side of the ledger, Karl has been prolific in securing extramural research funding. Since joining UH Mānoa in 1978, Karl has been principal investigator on more than 80 grants bringing over $100 million in federal and foundation funds plus over $50 million additionally to support research vessels and submersibles used in his own research. In 2006, the National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded Karl and colleagues a 10-year $36.8 million grant that led to the establishment of the Daniel K. Inouye Center for Microbial Oceanography: Research and Education (C-MORE), one of only 17 NSF science and technology centers in the nation at that time. In 2014, a $48 million private foundation award created the Simons Collaboration on Ocean Processes and Ecology (SCOPE) to complement the research of HOT and C-MORE. To date, this award from the Simons Foundation, remains the largest one-time award to the University of Hawai‘i.
Befitting a distinguished career such as Karl's, he was elected into the National Academy of Sciences in 2006, is a recipient of the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation Investigator Award in Marine Microbiology, May 2004-2020; recipient of the 2013 Alexander Agassiz Medal from the National Academy of Sciences; and recipient of the 2015 Balzan Prize for Oceanography, to name just a few of many.
Job Titles:
- HIMB 's New Director Bridges Biological, Social and Cultural Studies
ELEANOR STERLING FELL IN LOVE WITH LANGUAGES at an early age and had intended to study linguistics when she arrived at Yale University. However, through an undergraduate course in physical anthropology, Sterling discovered another love - a love of science.
"Up to that point, I really didn't believe that the sciences were for me," said Sterling who has since studied over ten languages. "I found out that I absolutely loved it and became excited about what science was and could become."
Fortunately, that turn of events on the New Haven, Connecticut campus would eventually lead Sterling to the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa (UH Mānoa), where she became the new director of the Hawai‘i Institute of Marine Biology (HIMB) in January 2022.
Prior to arriving at UH Mānoa, Sterling spent 26 years at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, most recently as Jaffe Chief Conservation Scientist. A highly regarded researcher and conservationist, Sterling's vast expertise ranges from conservation biology to international policy to the ecology of endangered species and ecosystems to the confluence of language, culture, and biodiversity to strategic planning and evaluation. She has spent all of her academic career balancing biological, social, and cultural studies.
Job Titles:
- Director
- Applied Research Laboratory at UH
Job Titles:
- Consultant for the Canada France Hawai‘I Telescope
- Vice President for Research and Innovation
- Vice President for Research and Innovation of the University of Hawai‘I System
As vice president for research and innovation of the University of Hawai‘i System, Vassilis Syrmos is charged with providing critical leadership and coordination of systemwide research and innovation efforts, including strategic direction, management of UH's research support, technology transfer/commercialization and compliance functions.
Since 1991, he has been with the department of electrical engineering at UH Mānoa, where he is a professor. He has also served as the associate dean of the College of Engineering. He spent a sabbatical leave at The Boeing Company as a research fellow. Syrmos has previously served as the associate vice chancellor for research at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa.
His interests include geometric and algebraic approaches in linear system theory, computational algorithms methods for signal and image processing, robust/optimal filter design in systems, medical imaging, and prognostics and diagnostics methods related to condition based maintenance systems. He is the author/coauthor of more than 100 journal and conference papers and the book Optimal Control, 2nd edition, John Wiley, 1995. He was an associate editor of Circuits, Systems and Signal Processing.
He has served in numerous international conferences in technical program committees, editorial boards and organizing committees. His research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Office of Naval Research, the Naval Air Systems Command, the Naval Sea Systems Command, the Air Force Research Labs at Wright Patterson, the Army Research Labs, The Boeing Company, Hawaiian Electric Company and Hamamatsu Photonics.
Syrmos has been a consultant for the Canada France Hawai‘i Telescope, Innovative Solutions, Science Technology International and others. He is a Boeing AD Welliver Fellow, a member of the Sigma Xi research organization, a senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and was a member of the board of the Hawai‘i Technology Development Venture program. He is a board member of the Research Corporation of the University of Hawai‘i (RCUH), Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawai‘i Authority (NELHA), Hawai‘i Green Growth and Hawaii Technology Development Corporation.
Syrmos obtained his PhD at Georgia Institute of Technology in electrical engineering and a diploma in electrical engineering from Democritus University of Thrace, Greece.