UH summer program puts high school students ‘to work’ in engineering

While many high school students will be spending their summer hitting the beach or the mall, 21 extraordinary high school juniors will be inside the University of Hawaiʻi’s engineering labs, getting a rare early look at careers that could shape Hawaiʻi’s future in clean water, resilient infrastructure, robotics, wireless networks, medical technology, and drones.

Every summer, the UH College of Engineering’s Junior Engineers Summer STEM Experience (JESSE) program places high school interns directly inside working research laboratories, side-by-side with PhD mentors and world-class faculty.

This year, Sarah Lee (Kalani HS), Jacob Roberts (Mililani HS), and Ava Miyasato (Punahou School) will be working with Dr. Bardia Konh in the AMMI Lab to 3D print, assemble, control, and assess minimally invasive image-guided medical robots.

Joshua Domingo (Leilehua HS), Mace Kawamoto (Pearl City HS), and Zoe Luo (UH Lab School) will be working with Dr. Mohammad Alam in the Structural Engineering Lab constructing models, running earthquake simulations, and learning how to interpret the data.

Kayla Ong (Roosevelt HS), Katie Ta (Kalani HS), and Daigo Tokunaga (Kalani HS) will be working with Dr. Zhiyue Wang in the Environmental Biotechnology Lab, testing a pilot-scale system for decentralized wastewater treatment to address Hawaiʻi’s environmental challenges.

Gabriel Agabao (Leilehua HS), Kecheng Long (Kaiser HS), and Riley Mochizuki (Kamehameha Kapālama) will be working with Dr. Chrisy Du to write Python code and learning to run molecular dynamics simulations using HOOMD-blue to study self-assembly behaviors of soft materials building blocks.

Tim He (Hawai‘i Baptist Academy), Jayden Lau (Saint Louis School), and Kensei Narahara (Kaiser HS) will be working with Dr. Xiaochan Xue in the Network Security Lab, and building a network aware robot that can sense when a wireless connection is getting worse and take corrective actions like a smart driver.

John Albert Ching (James Campbell HS), Eric Nguyen (Waipahu HS), and Destiny Nguyen (Kalani HS) will work with Dr. Te Faye Yap in the SoMa Lab to cast silicone elastomers that morph from 2D sheets into 3D forms.

Logan Domingo (Kennedy Catholic HS), Jayden Kim (Moanalua HS), and Diya Saravanan (McNeil HS) will be working with Dr. Wayne Shiroma in the UH Drone Technologies Lab, building and flight-testing an Unmanned Aerial System from the ground up.

The students will also go beyond campus with guided site visits to local engineering firms and government facilities such as the  Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard & IMF, Oceanit, NIWC Pacific, SSFM International, KAI Hawaii, Swinerton, Booz Allen Hamilton, and Burns & McDonnell. Students will see engineering in action across applied research, naval defense, secure communications, infrastructure design, construction, and technology.

Through this program, these students are getting a first-hand look at the work that keeps the Islands running while connecting them with mentors and a community of peers who share their curiosity and drive.