3 from UH earn
technology grants

Candidate turns down top astronomy post

Star-Bulletin Staff

Kelly J. Benoit Bird, zoology graduate student at the University of Hawaii, is building a sonar system that uses a dolphin signal instead of a man-made one to study the ocean from about 200 to 2,100 feet.

"This is a new way to look at it," she said. "It points horizontally instead of vertically and can be lowered down to 2,100 feet."

The signal, bouncing off the fish and back to the sonar system, will tell how big the fish are, what type they are and how many, she said, noting that fisheries officials are interested.

Bird and two other UH students will receive the first grants of $5,000 each for commercial technology projects from a fund set up by Richard Chan, a UH graduate who founded a software firm purchased by Microsoft Corp. in 1996.

UH President Kenneth Mortimer today was to present other awards to Joseph Dane, an information and computer science graduate student, and Liang-Yu Chen, sophomore in electrical engineering.

"They're just truly great - talented, bright and articulate," said Karin Mackenzie of the College of Arts and Sciences. "We really have so many students like this."

Eighteen applied for the one-year grants, she said.

Chan and Jim Laurel, founders of Aspect Software Engineering Inc., developer of applications for users of the World Wide Web, and their partners established the Aspect Technology Fund, aimed at promoting entrepreneurship and excellence and advancement in technology.

"The innovative ideas that the grants support could lead to the development of marketable products that could stimulate Hawaii's high-tech industry," Chan said.

Curtis Ho headed a faculty selection committee. Others were David Ashworth, Ralph Freese and Dan Wedemeyer.

"I wish we could have given a few more awards," said Ho, commenting on the high caliber of student research in the proposals.

Chan worked with the university in developing the criteria, Mackenzie said. "He did not want us to be limited by discipline or by graduate or undergraduate." She said he observed the process and "was really pleased with the outcome."

Dane, 28, is working on an online resource for ocean sports and ecotourism activities. "As far as I know, no one's done this before," he said.

But that's not what his thesis is about, he said. "It is something totally boring and unrelated to this."

Dane said he'd like to stay in Hawaii after finishing his degree and "either make this opportunity or some other opportunity work for me."

Hawaii may not offer the kind of jobs in technology available on the mainland, he said. "But that just means you have to work a little harder at it . . . maybe make your own opportunities."

He said he's "very grateful" for the grant, which will help him complete his studies in the fall of 2000.

Chen, 20, came here with her family from Taiwan when she was a high school senior and attended McKinley.

She said she was on the math team and was in advanced placement courses in calculus and physics.

"Since I like math and I like physics, I think maybe I should go into electrical engineering," she said.

She is doing research on a microelectrical mechanical system.

Her grant will help pay her tuition and enable her to buy material for research, she said.

An interest in marine mammal bioacoustics brought Bird, 22, here this year from Brown University.

"My adviser here -- Whitlow Au -- is a leading biosonar researcher," she said.

Bird said she's studying a group of fish, shrimp and squid that live in the middle of the water column and are a food source for important game fish and probably bottomfish. "They're an important link in the food chain here that hasn't been studied."