On May 16, 2022, the National Science Foundation awarded the University of Hawaiʻi’s Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (Hawaiʻi EPSCoR) a five-year $20-million grant to fund research and capacity building in support of actionable climate science through a collaboration called Change HI. The goal is to boost resilience, environmental restoration and economic vitality.
“This exciting project brings together an outstanding team of scientists and educators and has enormous potential to address two critical challenges for our state—preparing for the impacts of climate change and building a resilient data driven economy,” said Information Technology Services Director of Cyberinfrastructure and Principal Investigator Gwen Jacobs.
Hawaiʻi faces unique challenges as climate change impacts resource availability, ecological sustainability, economic vibrance and human health in the islands.
To help the state face the critical issues brought on by climate change, this multidisciplinary research effort will integrate expertise in climate and data science to enhance fundamental knowledge and develop new climate models, data products and tools.
As a collaborative program with multiple partners inside and outside the UH System, Change HI will advance education and workforce readiness in these areas for Hawaiʻi and help build a new data-driven knowledge economy statewide, targeting the growth of computer and data science that can be applied in critical areas of state need and growth.
“Change HI represents an amazing opportunity for us to advance even further one of our globally distinctive strengths, climate change and resilience,” said UH President David Lassner.
“At the same time we will continue to build fundamental capacity in Hawaiʻi in data science, which is increasingly vital across the full spectrum of inquiry and activity in academia, business and government,” he added.
Integrated climate and data science research
Change HI research comprises eight data and climate science-focused projects. The team of researchers will work in areas of climate downscaling, numerical modeling sensitivity studies, functional trait analysis, carbon sequestration, cloud water interception and soil moisture characterization.
All areas of research will use a variety of advanced data science techniques such as computational simulations, data visualization, natural language processing, machine learning, artificial intelligence and statistical modeling.
In addition, Change HI will build research capacity through new data science faculty hires, developing and creating access to climate data and products and building immersive data analytics environments to aid in decision making.
Education and training programs
Change HI will support data science education and workforce development for the state through a variety of programs. These programs include graduate fellowships, summer undergraduate research experiences, internships and data science training and certification.
The focus of both science and education efforts of the Change HI collaboration are to increase the state’s climate resilience through leveraging climate and data science research and support diversification and growth of Hawaiʻi’s economy through data analytics.
“Change HI will deliver human and program infrastructure that supports critical education and workforce development initiatives to ensure Hawaiʻi has the highly skilled, data-ready workforce that will power our future economy,” said Garret Yoshimi, Information Technology Services vice president and chief information officer.
“Broad-based training efforts under Change HI will also help to ensure opportunities for everyone in our community to strengthen our support for equity and inclusion in our STEM-powered future workforce,” he concluded.
Participating organizations include: UH System, UH Mānoa, UH Hilo, Chaminade University, Island of Opportunity Pacific Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation (LSAMP), Hawaiʻi IDeA Networks of Biomedical Research Excellence (INBRE), UH LGBTQ+ Center, UH Office of Innovation and Commercialization, Waianae Mountains Watershed Partnership, Hawaiʻi State Energy Office and Hawaiʻi Community Foundation.
Photo of climate station at Lyon Artoretum courtesy of University of Hawaiʻi.