As the founding college of the University of Hawaiʻi, CTAHR has witnessed much growth and change during the past 100+ years – but none more challenging than this 2020-21 schoolyear. As we approach Spring convocation, let’s take a moment to celebrate the successes of our undergraduates, graduates, PhD candidates, and post-docs. The examples below just scratch the surface.
Kyle Marcelino and Renisha Karki, grad students in the Dept. of Molecular Biosciences and Bioengineering, were recognized at the 2021 International Conference on Sustainable Biowaste Management in Hong Kong. Kyle was awarded Outstanding Postgraduate Researcher for his research topic, “Nanobubbles technology in aquaponics,” while Renisha won the Outstanding Poster award for her presentation, “Anaerobic co-digestion of coffee pulp and cattle manure for enhanced biomethane generation.”
“I am so proud of Renisha and Kyle, who are self-motivated in their research,” says Samir Khanal, who mentors the Environment and Bioenergy Research Group. “The awards demonstrated their dedication and excellence in research in front of more than 400 attendees who are researchers and professors from diverse areas of environmental engineering, bioengineering, and plant and social sciences!“
“I am very honored to receive this award,” says Kyle. “Attending this conference, despite the pandemic, was quite an experience for me. I hope we will get many opportunities as this in the upcoming days.”
“This is the first conference where I have presented, and I was proud to represent CTAHR and UH Mānoa,” says Renisha. “This experience has taught me a lot and motivated me to continue working hard for the betterment of environmental and public health.”
CTAHR alums Lucia Amore and Shelley Wong will graduate from UH JABSOM and were just matched for medical residency programs. Lucia (whose mother is Tessie Amore of the Dept. of Tropical Plant and Soil Sciences) will be joining the Family Medicine Clinic at Swedish Medical Center in Seattle, while Shelley will study psychiatry at JABSOM. Read more.
“Shelley and Lucia were not only good students, but also dedicated individuals who volunteered their time to CTAHR and to different community needs,” says Kacie Ho of the Dept. of Human Nutrition, Food and Animal Sciences. “They are knowledgeable, skilled, and caring. Those are the characteristics you’d want in your doctor. The FSHN faculty are proud of our two former graduates, who we know will make excellent physicians in the near future.”
In the spirit of last week’s Earth Day celebration, students in the Dept. of Plant and Environmental Protection Sciences PEPS 410 class demonstrated the use of no-till sorghum cover cropping as a regenerative agriculture approach to restore soil health, improve the water cycle, enhance beneficial soil microorganisms that provide ecosystem services, while suppressing soil-borne pests. These would all lead to an ecosystem that is more resilient to climate change, and strengthening the health and vitality of farm soil. View the YouTube video of their project.
“It’s amazing to see students work collaboratively to generate education videos using what they learned from their classroom experiments” says Koon-Hui Wang. “The students said this exercise increased their learning experience to the next level.”
Photo: clockwise from top left: Renisha (far left) and Kyle (far right) in Samir’s Environment and Bioenergy Research Group. Lucia and Shelley. The PEPS 410 Earth Day experiment.