DENNIS ODA / DODA@STARBULLETIN.COM
Aaron Ohta is the winner of the National Science Foundation fellowship that pays for his grad school at UCLA. He just graduated from the University of Hawaii.
Pride of UH has
big plans for small toolsAaron Ohta will work with
nanotechnology on a fellowship
As a little boy, Aaron Ohta followed the printed directions included with his box of Legos only the first time he built something.
Then he built things his way.
"It was much more fun and interesting to build things by myself," said Ohta, now a nationally acclaimed engineering student at the age of 22.
After receiving a full $45,000 University of Hawaii Regents Scholarship that put him through the UH's engineering program, Ohta graduated in May and won the nationally recognized Alton B. Zerby Award, which is awarded annually to the top undergraduate electrical engineering student in the country.
Ohta is also the first UH engineering student to receive a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, which gives him $114,000 to help pay for three years of graduate work. Ohta, a Kalani High School graduate, leaves at the end of this month for the University of California at Los Angeles, which has awarded him $42,000 to pay for his first year of graduate school.
Admitting he is sad to leave Hawaii, Ohta said he is looking forward to studying under Professor Ming Wu, a pioneer in the new engineering field of nanotechnology.
"I guess I am part (of Hawaii's) brain drain right now, but hopefully I will be able to come back to Hawaii," said Ohta, who enjoys surfing, hiking and spear fishing.
"I will miss the land, sea and people of Hawaii and I want to come back," he said.
Ohta's parents are both teachers. His father, Alan, is an evolutionary geneticist and an adjunct professor at Chaminade University. His mother, Gayle, is a retired elementary school teacher. His sister, Leigh, 26, works in the accounting department of Hawaii National Bank.
During his years at Wilson Elementary School, Ohta was mainly interested in biology and science and remembers that at his first science fair he did a display explaining how icebergs are formed. At his second fair, he did a presentation on the Galapagos turtle.
At Kalani, he mostly liked physics and science, but remembers a few good English classes and how he loved reading "Moby Dick."
When he started UH, Ohta thought engineering looked interesting, but he was unsure about which branch he should study.
Then he discovered the "micromouse" and that led to robotics.
The idea was to build and train small robotic mice that have a base of about 2 inches by 3 inches and move on wheels, to run from the periphery of an 8-by-8-foot maze to the center. The intellectual challenge was to figure out how to help mice detect the walls around them and find their way through the maze to its center.
Now Ohta is looking forward to learning nanotechnology, a study of robotics far smaller than his micromouse. Some proponents say nanotechnology may someday lead to innovations such as tiny robots that could be injected into the body and then eat away cholesterol-clotted arteries as an alternative to surgery.
"I really want to study a technology that can help people in terms of health or just the quality of their lives," said Ohta.
