The MEGA Lab of UH Hilo is shifting the ‘culture of science’ with unprecedented engagement from students and community members.

The MEGA Lab is reshaping research opportunities for students designed by co-founders John Burns, Cliff Kapono, and Hauani Kane. During their surfing trips together as students, they shared frustrated opinions on stigmas in the culture of science; their collaboration developed the MEGA Lab, a marine science research facility in Hilo. 

The lab works with other industries, such as art and surfing, to showcase how science impacts and improves our lives. Researchers recently created 3D maps of the reef Oʻahu’s Banzai Pipeline and Fiji’s Cloudbreak to model how the seafloor generates some of the world’s most famous surf breaks. The project doesn’t follow the typical type of research in marine science laboratories, but that’s a goal of the lab: Ensuring the work has purpose helps to connect with larger audiences and support science to improve the health and well-being of communities around the globe. 

“We aim to do work in a team environment because it lets our students work together,” Burns said. “It lets us push the needle in the direction we want it to where we shift the culture of science from being exclusionary, and sometimes elitist, and make it more open-minded.”

These projects allow the students and faculty of the lab to engage non-academic interests in their research. It also gives students an active voice in the direction of their projects, one of the stigmas that Burns focused on dissolving.

“We aim to do work in a team environment because it lets our students work together,” Burns said. “It lets us push the needle in the direction we want it to where we shift the culture of science from being exclusionary, and sometimes elitist, and make it more open-minded.”

These projects allow the students and faculty of the lab to engage non-academic interests in their research. It also gives students an active voice in the direction of their projects, one of the stigmas that Burns focused on dissolving.

“It’s very disrespectful to treat a human being differently, five days before they get their Ph.D. to five days after because now they have a piece of paper in their hand that validates what they were saying,” Burns said. “Let’s create a culture that you want to be a part of. Let’s create a culture that’s respectful.”

Burns’ mentor, Ruth Gates, was featured in a 2017 documentary with Netflix, Chasing Coral. Burns helped set up webcams for the documentary off of Oʻahu and East Hawaiʻi, and was later able to use the camera setups to start a live stream featured on the MEGA Lab website.

The cameras are currently offline to be replaced, but a 2-hour highlight reel displays the unique diversity of Hawaiian reefs. The footage has been used internationally in labs, classrooms, and hospice centers. 

“Every scientist will ask why we did it, as in ‘what’s the point?’ but everyone else enthusiastically reaches out with appreciation for experiencing these reefs and asking how to support science and conservation,” Burns said, addressing the live stream as another project not seen in typical research labs. “We’ve had over a million views on that camera.”

The public interest from the live stream cameras has also allowed teams at the MEGA Lab to engage in school visits and a public exhibit in the Mokupāpapa Discovery Center in Hilo. The exhibit is open five days a week, allowing visitors to interact with scientists, look at past projects, and watch current work in the vibrant reefs of the Big Island. This engagement has also allowed Burns and his colleagues to shift the representation of role models in science. 

“We [scientists] do have a culture of how things are done, and it might not be in the best shape that it could. It might lead people to feel excluded or dismayed,” Burns said. “We want to see the next generation go beyond us… for kids from all walks of life to be motivated to go into science.”

Inspiring future scientists to remove bias and exclusion is how the MEGA Lab has grown from a brainstorm during surf breaks to a successful landmark in the marine science community. “If I had to put it into one sentence,” Burns said, “we just want to do science that has purpose and meaning.”

Burns is now an associate professor at the University of Hawaiʻi (UH) at Hilo specializing in coral reef ecology and data science and leads the Change Hawaiʻi Hilo student program. Kapono is a professional surfer, chemist, and assistant professor at Arizona State University. Kane has become the first Native Hawaiian woman to earn a Ph.D. in geology, currently working at UH Mānoa as an assistant professor. Together, their diverse academic backgrounds created the framework for their lab: a combination of biology, chemistry, geology, and a shared passion for changing stigmas in science.

-by Tori Miranda