• Historic Totals: Across the islands, we’ve seen up to 77 inches of rain in just 14 days. 
• Statewide Impact: Rainfall has reached as high as 3000% of the normal amount for this time of year (see figure).
• Hardest Hit: The second storm (March 19-23) dumped up to 61 inches, triggering devastating floods on Oʻahu’s North Shore and throughout Maui County.
• Mānoa Flash Floods: On March 23, intense bursts of 8 inches fell on already saturated ground, causing rapid flooding in the valley.

Preliminary estimates show that an average of 20.4 inches of rain fell across the major islands during this two-week period. That implies over 2.3 trillion gallons of water poured onto the islands—the equivalent of almost 3.5 million Olympic-size swimming pools

Data & map provided by the Hawaiʻi Climate Data Portal

March 10 to March 16, 2026 Storm Viewer: https://www.hawaii.edu/climate-data-portal/extreme-event/

Read More: https://www.hawaii.edu/news/2026/03/19/hawaii-mesonet-storm-data/

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By Susan Enright/UH Hilo Stories.

The University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo has been awarded a new three-year, $1.2 million NASA-funded research grant to advance understanding of coastal resilience in Hawaiʻi while expanding hands-on research and workforce development opportunities for students across the 10-campus UH System.

“We are very excited to connect students from across the UH system through applied research experiences that help build educational pathways into careers in science and conservation,” says John Burns, UH Hilo associate professor of marine science and chair of the department who will lead the project as co-principal investigator with Haunani Kane, assistant professor of earth sciences at UH Mānoa School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology.

Both marine scientists have extensive research experience in climate impacts on reef and coastal areas. Burns’s research is based at his Multiscale Environmental Graphical Analysis Laboratory, commonly called MEGA Lab, at UH Hilo. He has developed innovative techniques to create three-dimensional maps of coral reefs to accurately measure how natural and human-induced disturbances impact ecosystem function.

• UH Hilo marine scientist John Burns receives tenure (Oct. 7, 2022, UH Hilo Stories)
• UH Hilo marine scientist John H. R. Burns honored for excellence in undergraduate education (May 20, 2020, UH Hilo Stories)
• Climate change research funded by NASA; UH Hilo students to investigate coastal erosion (Oct. 6, 2021, UH Hilo Stories)

A defining aspect of the new grant-funded project is its systemwide student engagement model

For the new grant project, the Burns-Kane team will integrate Earth observation science, in-water monitoring, and community-based knowledge to examine how sea level rise and climate-driven change are affecting coral reef ecosystems and nearshore coastal environments throughout Hawaiʻi.

“A defining aspect of the project is its systemwide student engagement model,” says Burns. “Students from UH Hilo, UH Mānoa, UH West Oʻahu, Hawaiʻi Community College, and Kapiʻolani Community College will participate directly in the research.”

Through this effort, students will receive hands-on training in satellite remote sensing, drone-based coastal mapping, three-dimensional reef modeling, and data analysis, while working alongside faculty mentors, community partners, and NASA collaborators.

Focus on coral reef and coastal systems that play a critical role in protecting shorelines by reducing wave energy, flooding, and erosion

The research focuses on coral reef and coastal systems that play a critical role in protecting shorelines by reducing wave energy, flooding, and erosion. By combining advanced technologies with place-based and cultural perspectives, the project will generate actionable data to support coastal planning, resource management, and long-term resilience strategies for Hawaiʻi communities.

Beyond its scientific outcomes, the project emphasizes workforce development and educational pathways that strengthen participation in STEM fields across the state. By engaging students from multiple campuses and academic levels, the initiative helps build a diverse and locally trained workforce equipped to address Hawaiʻi’s most pressing climate and environmental challenges.

“I believe this is a special project because it brings students from multiple campuses and programs together to work toward a shared goal of supporting long term coastal resilience strategies,” says Burns.

Story by Susan Enright, public information specialist for the Office of the Chancellor and editor of UH Hilo Stories. She received her bachelor of arts in English and certificate in women’s studies from UH Hilo.

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The report is designed to connect communities, resource managers, and policymakers with the climate data behind what many experienced firsthand, providing essential information to support climate preparedness and long-term planning across the islands.

This report reflects decades of effort to monitor Hawaiʻi’s climate and conduct high-level scientific research, paired with more than eight years of collaboration by a team of climate and data scientists to develop an expanding suite of high-quality climate maps and decision support tools. These maps are hosted on the Hawaiʻi Climate Data Portal (HCDP) and, for the first time, make it possible to summarize climate conditions consistently across the entire state.

“Throughout 2025, we heard people across the state talking about just how hot and dry the year felt,” said Ryan Longman, director of the Hawaiʻi Climate Data Portal. “Now we have the data to show what people were experiencing on the ground. We hope this type of reporting helps connect residents to their own lived experiences with Hawaiʻi’s climate and gives communities the information they need to plan for what’s ahead.”

The report is accompanied by a detailed, interactive website that allows users to explore the same climate information for individual islands and even for specific ahupuaʻa or watersheds. Together, the report and website provide a clear picture of what many residents across Hawaiʻi experienced firsthand in 2025.

Highlights from the report

• 2025 was the second driest year in Hawaiʻi’s 106-year record, with statewide rainfall averaging just 42 inches—about 20 inches below the 30-year average.
• Maui experienced its driest year on record, while Hawaiʻi Island recorded its second driest year.
• Rainfall was below average for 11 out of 12 months, and August ranked as the driest August in the past 35 years.
• Statewide, 2025 ranked as the sixth warmest year on record, averaging 0.8°F warmer than normal. For Maui and Kauaʻi, it was the third warmest year since 1990.
• Drought conditions were widespread and severe. By the end of the year, 65% of the state was classified as abnormally dry or worse, and all of Molokaʻi experienced dry conditions. The most intense drought occurred in February, when 56% of Hawaiʻi was in severe drought or worse.

Future data collection to expand

Looking ahead, the establishment of the Hawaiʻi Mesonet is expected to further improve the quality and detail of future reports by expanding on-the-ground climate observations. This report marks the first in a new annual series, to be released at the start of each year and refined and expanded over time as Hawaiʻi’s climate data and monitoring networks continue to grow.

The report also announced the launch of monthly climate update summaries, expected later this spring, which will send the latest information on rainfall, temperature and drought directly to subscribers’ inboxes, with a focus on the parts of the island chain that matter most to the individual subscribers.

“The goal of the monthly climate summaries is to provide an early signal of emerging rainfall and drought conditions,” said Longman. “By delivering site-specific information at the scales people actually work at, these updates can support more proactive planning and decision-making.”

The report was compiled by the Hawaiʻi Climate Data Portal and Hawaiʻi Mesonet teams. Funding was provided by the National Science Foundation, the State of Hawaiʻi Commission on Water Resource Management, and the U.S. Geological Survey Pacific Islands Climate Adaptation Science Center.

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The University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa is expanding its role in shaping the state’s energy and resilience future through a new $1.8-million federal investment supporting advanced visualization and planning tools developed by the UH Laboratory for Advanced Visualization and Applications (LAVA), in partnership with the Hawaiʻi State Energy Office (HSEO).

The funding supports the continued development of the Hawaiʻi Advanced Visualization Energy Nexus (HAVEN) system—an interactive 3D platform that helps policymakers, planners and communities better understand complex energy infrastructure, land-use tradeoffs and resilience planning decisions. HAVEN makes technical planning data accessible to users with varying levels of expertise, supporting transparent and informed decision making across the state.

“HAVEN represents a new generation of planning tools that combine immersive visualization, geospatial intelligence and emerging AI capabilities,” said Jason Leigh, UH Mānoa Department of Information and Computer Sciences professor and LAVA Lab director. “With this support, we can scale these technologies statewide while training the next generation of visualization, data science and AI professionals here in Hawaiʻi.”

Increase security, modernize grid

As Hawaiʻi moves to increase energy security and modernize its aging grid, communities face difficult choices around infrastructure siting, regional impacts and costs. HAVEN enables users to visualize scenarios, explore planning model inputs and outputs, and assess cascading impacts related to energy, land use and disaster preparedness.

“HAVEN visualization technologies have proven to be extremely effective in making energy plans and analysis more approachable,” said Chris Yunker, managing director of resilience, clean transportation and analytics for HSEO. “The resulting energy plans incorporate informed input from policy makers and local communities.”

Over a multi-year period, HSEO and the LAVA Lab will expand HAVEN’s capabilities, integrate complementary visualization tools, and explore how AI can help make these visualization tools easier to use and available to more communities. The HAVEN project also supports workforce development by providing UH graduate students with hands-on experience in advanced data visualization.

The Department of Information and Computer Sciences is housed in UH Mānoa’s College of Natural Sciences.

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The University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo hosted more than 150 high school students and educators from across East Hawaiʻi on Nov. 20 for GIS Day, an annual celebration of geographic information systems and the many ways geospatial science helps shape human understanding of the world.

The event was led by the Maui Economic Development Board and its STEMworks program in partnership with UH Hilo’s Pacific International Space Center for Exploration Systems (PISCES) and the Spatial Data Analysis and Visualization Research laboratory run by Professor of Geography and Environmental Science Ryan Perroy. PISCES Avionics Engineer and Program Manager Amber Imai-Hong and Administrative Specialist Ashley Truchan were instrumental in coordinating the event.

A total of 154 students and educators from Keaʻau High School, Hilo High School, Hawaiʻi Academy of Arts & Science, Waiākea High School, and Ke Kula ʻO Nāwahīokalaniʻōpuʻu participated in the hands-on event.

“Much mahalo for organizing the GIS event,” says a high school educator who attended. “Our kids had a great time, and so did we. You planted seeds that will grow. Our students will find their way.”

The day began with remarks from Simon Kattenhorn, dean of the UH Hilo College of Natural and Health Sciences, who shared his geospatial research on detecting water on other planets. His presentation highlighted how GIS and remote-sensing skills support science, engineering, and environmental problem-solving, not only on Earth but across the solar system.

Students rotated through seven workshops led by GIS professionals and educators specializing in volcanology, ArcGIS and spatial mapping, conservation, traditional wayfinding, and invasive species management. Technology was a key focus of each session with demonstrations of drones, LiDAR, ground-penetrating radar, and spatial mapping software. Students also met face-to-face with GIS professionals during a speed networking session to talk story and ask questions about their work.

–PISCES News.

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Hosted on a new interactive website, Aii highlights dozens of active projects that demonstrate how AI can be used to improve daily life and decision-making—from natural disaster prediction and healthcare innovation to creative media and cultural preservation. Each project reflects a commitment to building AI that is human-centered, transparent and rooted in Hawaiʻi’s values.

Among the efforts is SAGE3, a $5 million national project that develops software and systems to enhance collaboration between people and AI. The project empowers society to make better decisions, foster creativity and build shared understanding in addressing complex societal and scientific challenges. Other projects include KolokoloChat, a chatbot for Hawaiʻi’s state judiciary that helps the public access court information; and a student-led agricultural robotics system that earned international recognition for improving farm productivity. Additional research explores AI for astronomy, medical imaging, biodiversity and the revitalization of endangered languages.

Collaboration and education

Aii also serves as a central hub for collaboration and education. The site outlines pathways for engagement through degree programs, including UH’s two new graduate-level programs to prepare students and working professionals for high-demand careers in AI and data science, as well as workshops and partnerships with local agencies, nonprofits and businesses. Upcoming events include an AI literacy workshop series on Hawaiʻi Island, and free AI and data science public lectures at the Walter Dods, Jr. RISE Center this fall.

“We built this site to make our work transparent, accessible and locally grounded,” said Guylaine Poisson, ICS professor and department chair. “AI has immense potential—especially when designed in partnership with the community and in a responsible way.”

For more, visit the Aii website.

ICS is housed in UH Mānoa’s College of Natural Sciences.

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The University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo has been awarded over $1.4 million as part of a landmark $152 million artificial intelligence (AI) project jointly sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and NVIDIA to the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence (Ai2). The nationwide initiative will develop the first fully open AI system designed specifically to accelerate scientific research and innovation, and UH Hilo faculty and students will play a key role.

“Having UH Hilo involved is going to raise the AI profile of UH Hilo, and it’s going to definitely enhance our programs in Data Science, especially, but also Computer Science, to help us offer more of this cutting edge work in AI to our students,” said Travis Mandel, PhD, associate professor of Computer Science and coordinator of UH Hilo’s Data Science Program.

“If Hawaiʻi wants to be involved in this AI revolution, we need to be able to evaluate how well these systems are helping with problems that we care about here,” explained Mandel.

The AI system will be fully open — a rare feature in the field — allowing UH Hilo students and faculty to not only use but also explore and modify how the models are trained. This transparency will help demystify AI and give students direct experience with high-performance systems often inaccessible to smaller institutions.

“We are honored to work alongside Ai2 and the other university partners on this groundbreaking initiative,” said Chancellor Bonnie D. Irwin. “This award reflects our university’s growing strength in data science education and our commitment to advancing Hawaiʻi’s role in the nation’s technological future.”

The project will integrate state-of-the-art AI infrastructure into UH Hilo’s academic programs, creating summer internship opportunities, school-year internships, and collaborations with leading AI experts. Students will work side-by-side with faculty and scientists applying AI to local and global challenges in fields such as astronomy, marine science, and climate research.

Mandel also plans to embed project-driven assignments into his courses, ensuring students work on real, cutting edge problems rather than theory alone.

“One thing that society in general is struggling with right now, is everybody’s starting to use AI to help them in various ways, with assignments, with projects, with work, but there’s so few people that actually understand what goes on under the hood of that AI, right? And so to train more students, to provide more access to the world in general, to understand what goes into these systems and how they’re built — I think that’s really a huge contribution that we’re making,” Mandel explained.

Learn more: Read the complete NSF and NVIDIA announcement about this groundbreaking $152M partnership advancing open AI research nationwide.

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Two newly-hired cyberinfrastructure facilitators served as peer mentors throughout the program, guiding students in applying cyberinfrastructure resources and methods to their research projects. Students met daily to brainstorm and refine research topics, participated in Jetstream2 training, and completed an introduction to high performance computing (HPC) which included an onboarding session for Koa, the UH HPC cluster. Additionally, students explored National Science Foundation-funded ACCESS resources along with open-source platforms such as Anaconda.

“The CI-SIP program this year was a remarkable showcase of what’s possible when talented students are given the tools, mentorship, and compute power to explore complex problems. From flood awareness apps and environmental dashboards to protein modeling, AI-driven performance forecasting, and bilingual science tools, the projects reflected a stunning diversity of topics—many of which addressed challenges in health and sustainability. While not every project focused on AI, several used high-performance computing resources like Jetstream2 and UH’s Koa cluster to push the limits of data exploration—and many students expressed a strong desire to go even deeper into AI applications,” said program lead Alexander Stokes, an assistant professor of cellular and molecular biology at the UH John A. Burns School of Medicine.  

Students worked with large language models and gained valuable skills in data science, artificial intelligence fundamentals and machine learning through self-paced learning modules. Through their individual projects, students also explored applications of these tools in research utilizing cyberinfrastructure frameworks.

“I gained hands-on experience working with unstructured real-world data and I learned how to use tools like Pandas and Plotly to visualize and interpret data trends with Python. This was my first project like this,” said University of Guam Computer Science undergraduate student Earl Parmintuan. 

The program was structured around the data life cycle, with week one focused on project ideation and data discovery, week two on cleaning and organizing datasets, week three on data analysis and visualization and the final week dedicated to finalizing and presenting projects. 

“I love creating things and seeing a final product,” said UH Mānoa Information and Computer Science undergraduate student Chiara Duyn when speaking about her flood awareness web application project “I also wanted to learn more about how stream heights and tides can affect flooding on the island while also helping others out.”

The CI-SIP program is funded by NSF’s Strengthening the Cyberinfrastructure Professionals Ecosystem (SCIPE) Cyberinfrastructure Pacific Professionals (CI-PP) award, which supports the enhancement of cyberinfrastructure professional training for science research, education, and practice in the Hawai’i-Guam-Pacific region. 

“It was a joy to witness students take ownership of their work, support each other’s growth, and step confidently into the world of cyberinfrastructure-powered research,” said Stokes.

Recordings of the students’ final presentations can be found at the UH Hawaiʻi Data Science Institute’s YouTube channel at go.hawaii.edu/MSr.

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The Climate Change, Climate Variability and Drought Portfolio tool was unveiled at a May 2025 meeting of the Hawaiʻi Climate Data Portal (HCDP) User Group, which drew lawmakers, emergency managers and wildfire officials. The new system lets users select or draw an area of interest, enter basic details and receive a tailored climate portfolio by email. It is free to use and portfolios are generated and delivered in less than an hour.

“We used to generate these portfolios one at a time, but the demand for them was so great that we decided to automate the entire process,” said Ryan Longman, lead researcher on the HCDP project and the UH consortium director of the Pacific Islands Climate Adaptation Science Center.

The tool is part of the larger Change Hawaiʻi project, which is working to transform how the state tracks weather, drought and wildfire risk using advanced climate modeling, real-time data systems and artificial intelligence. Change Hawaiʻi is part of the Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research or Hawaiʻi EPSCoR.

Real-time dashboard

At the meeting, researchers also rolled out a newly developed, open-source dashboard for the Hawaiʻi Mesonet—a growing network of 110 weather monitoring stations statewide, 66 of which are now operational. Each station collects 21 environmental variables and generates more than a million data points daily that feed into predictive models for wildfire and drought.

• Read more about the dashboard on UH News

“This dashboard puts real-time data at the fingertips of the people who need it most,” said Tom Giambelluca, Hawaiʻi Mesonet project lead, Change Hawaiʻi co-principal investigator and former director of the Water Resources Research Center at UH. “High-quality data has never been easier to access, and future applications with the data are limitless.”

Wildfire system

The team has developed daily wildfire probability maps and forecasts statewide through the use of optimized machine learning models for more accurate fire behavior forecasting and drought assessment. The user-friendly, real-time data is accessed through the HCDP, which is publicly available. Read more on UH News.

The goal is to provide early warning to fire managers, emergency responders and landowners so they can deploy resources, issue public advisories and reduce risks through more informed planning. This wildfire system can identify critical wildfire ignition factors, including relative humidity, temperature, rainfall, normalized difference vegetation index (components of wildfire fuel) and land cover.

Future efforts will leverage robust cyberinfrastructure, advanced data visualization, and innovative AI and machine learning applications, including computer vision and edge AI systems, to create a more resilient Hawaiʻi.

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Set across 10 campuses on four Hawaiian islands, the University of Hawaii System presents unique challenges and opportunities for providing research computing support. FY 2024 was a record year for external funding, with the system bringing in more than $615 million. CaRCC spoke with Sean Cleveland, Interim Director for Cyberinfrastructure at the University of Hawaii System, to learn how his team delivers high-performance computing and research software engineering across this distributed environment. The following Q&A has been edited for brevity and clarity.

How did IT Services Cyberinfrastructure get started at University of Hawaii?

Cyberinfrastructure was started in 2013 when Dr. Gwen Jacobs was hired as the director of the program. She brought on Dr. Ron Merrill to help with setting up a central high-performance computing cluster. The University of Hawaii was also part of the NSF-funded ACI-REF program, a consortium of universities that provided facilitation skills to help establish the program. The group was created to develop a centralized supercomputing cluster that would serve all ten campuses across four different islands.

What kinds of services and support does IT Services Cyberinfrastructure provide?

We’ve evolved since 2013, but currently we provide a centralized computing cluster as a free resource for all researchers, faculty, and students across the system. We also run this as a condo resource, where researchers can purchase compute nodes to add to the cluster. When they’re not using them, those resources are available to others.

We offer facilitation services with two different onboarding sessions each month to train researchers on accessing and using our cluster computing system and storage systems. We’ve brought research storage online in recent years, offering some free storage attached to the cluster and also a pay-per-year-per-terabyte service. This is accessible via a service called OwnCloud, similar to Dropbox or Google Drive, allowing users to access data on laptops or workstations and collaborate.

We also offer research software engineering services and data science services. We have team members who help develop workflows, software, user interfaces, and science gateways. We collaborate with researchers on writing proposals and grants, providing facilities documents and help with data management plans. Some team members can serve as co-PIs or PIs on awards.

Who are your primary clients or users?

We work with a variety of researchers, but we have a current project with our EPSCoR Track 1 award called Change Hawaii: Harnessing the Data Revolution for Island Resilience that focuses on workforce and atmospheric science , geo-science and data science. We work extensively with scientists, helping them leverage our high-performance computing infrastructure and access to national infrastructure. We host part of the Jetstream 2 national cloud at UH and help researchers access these cloud resources.

We also partner with researchers doing bioinformatics and microbiome work, building out a science gateway to help run their pipelines and workflows. We’re now helping update that to add additional metadata and data management capabilities.

We typically have about 400+ active researchers using our infrastructure each year, with about 1,500-1,600 accounts created since we started. We also support classes, with 2-3 classes of about 20 students each accessing our systems each semester, ranging from undergraduate to graduate levels.

How many people do you have delivering these services?

On the high-performance computing side, we have Dr. Ron Merrill as our HPC manager and David Charlzenbach as our HPC architect. I used to work on that side and still pitch in occasionally.

We have three research software engineers with master’s degrees in computer science and backgrounds in data science, ranging from visualization to AI, as well as database and analytics experience. They work on projects like the Hawaii Climate Data Portal and the CMAIKI microbiome science gateway. We also partner with the Hawaii State Department of Health on their Overdose to Action program, helping build a data dashboard for monitoring substance use and behavioral health metrics across the state.

We have an administrative staff member who helps coordinate events and activities, another person who handles support and some administrative tasks with a background in networking, and a communications lead who helps with our website, newsletters, and outreach. We also have an education lead who runs our graduate and undergraduate training programs, along with typically one graduate student and two undergraduate students.

How do you run your student program?

For the last three years, we’ve had a cyber training program with a couple of graduate fellows who help build and run our cyber infrastructure and data science workshops. They also develop personal independent development plans for their professional goals. We give them opportunities to hear from graduates who have transitioned to academia or industry.

When students work with us directly, we meet with them weekly to outline what they’ll be working on. We use Redmine, a project management tool, to help manage their work. If they’re handling help desk duties, they help with tickets through that system. We try to give them a breadth of opportunity to learn technical skills and access different hardware or technology, plus professional development opportunities.

What other research support providers do you work with?

We work with one of the bioinformatics cores on campus on the microbiome project. We try to partner with some of the larger departments, like the Institute for Astronomy, which runs many of the large telescopes across the island and has significant data and computing needs. We also work with our medical school cancer center when possible, although there are challenges with HIPAA and restricted data.

We partner extensively with the Texas Advanced Computing Center on an NSF CSSI Scientific Software Middleware project called TAPIS, which we use to help deliver our Science Gateway infrastructure.

What does your program do especially well?

I think we’ve been delivering HPC services especially well and helping facilitate their adoption by researchers. We get a lot of positive feedback from faculty praising access to the resources and the expertise of our staff in helping them leverage our systems or software they’re not familiar with, or in accelerating their workflows.

We’re also proud of the science and data gateways we’ve built. The Hawaii Climate Data Portal has had 45,000-50,000 different visitors accessing many gigabytes of environmental science data. We continue to work directly with researchers to productionize their science so that things generate daily and monthly data products automatically.

How is your program funded?

We have two positions that are university/state funded: our HPC manager and the director position. Everyone else is funded through soft money. Some of the grants you mentioned, and other grants we have, provide funding. We get some return to overhead from Information Technology Services and the VPR office to support research.

The university and ITS subsidize our data center, power, and cooling. In addition to being PIs or co-PIs on awards with salaries written in, we also use a consulting model where researchers who need portions of an FTE for research software engineering, data science, or system administration can create agreements with us.

How do you measure the impact of your program?

We look at usage metrics for our different services and the demographics of who’s using them. For our workshops and training events, we track attendance to see if we need to modify our outreach to target departments or demographic groups that might not be aware of our services.

We track publications that cite our resources and the assistance we provide to see our impact on science. We survey our user community yearly and ask them to share their publications with us. We’re also starting to track what awards are coming into the institution from researchers who use our resources to see our impact on grant funding.

For our community gateways and resources, we track usage metrics for visitors, files accessed, and data downloaded, which helps us understand if they’re useful and what the community is most interested in.

What kinds of activities do you do for outreach and communications?

We have a faculty advisory board that we meet with every semester. We also hold a symposium or showcase of research where we invite users of our resources to share their findings through short talks or lightning talks. 

This year we’re starting outreach to new graduate students at their orientation fair, and we try to connect with new faculty onboarding sessions as well. We also meet with potential faculty candidates during recruitment to let them know about our resources.

We do direct outreach to departments, giving talks to let them know about our resources and highlighting research that’s leveraging our infrastructure. All of this is in addition to the workshops and training we offer.

What advice would you give about hiring a communications person for research computing?

Having a communications person is important for bringing in new users and recognizing the researchers who partner with us. As we make updates and changes to our infrastructure, it’s helpful to have someone focused on communicating those changes because our technical staff are focused on the technical work.

A communications person can help take some of the load off technical staff by helping to update websites, documentation, or creating videos. They can also help organize and run events for outreach. Depending on team size, it might not need to be a full-time position initially, but having someone dedicated to communications can definitely help bring in more researchers and opportunities.

You can’t just build resources and expect faculty to come use them – it’s not a “Field of Dreams” situation. You have to do outreach.

How do you organize your team’s work?

We have bi-weekly team standup meetings where everyone gives updates on what they’ve been doing and what they’ll focus on next, so the entire team has visibility into priorities. We do strategic planning every 3-6-12 months to anticipate deadlines, programs, reports, and grant activities.

We use Redmine to track issues and projects. An administrative group meets weekly to review these items and prioritize. We meet with the hardware team weekly to address issues, and also with the software team weekly. We use a combination of Zoom meetings for synchronous communication and Slack for asynchronous communication.

What are your medium-term goals?

We’re looking at being able to support more PHI (Protected Health Information) and restricted data environments, and exploring how we can support more commercial cloud providers for our researchers. We have a finite data center size with power and cooling limitations, so we’ll host what we can locally but need to help researchers efficiently leverage other opportunities.

We also look at planning for when our big grants and funding will end and how we can replace them. We consider equipment needs and the latest trends in computing like AI accelerators and potentially quantum computing.

We align our plans with the university’s mission and with information technology services’ goals to prepare for upcoming initiatives and changes.

What’s a success story you’re particularly proud of?

The Hawaii Climate Data Portal stands out. The lead PI, Dr. Thomas Giambelluca, had been at UH for over 40 years and had wanted to build this environmental data portal for 10-15 years. He wasn’t able to do it until partnering with us, when we brought the research software engineering and data science expertise to make it happen.

Before this collaboration, it would take a year to generate a monthly rainfall gridded data product for the state. Now we can do it on the first day of the next month and have it available immediately. We’re bringing this capability online daily now. This is a big win that uses our computing infrastructure, research software engineering, and data science technologies to advance research and create community impact. The portal is now used by the state, commercial entities, USGS, and USDA.

What’s your elevator pitch for your program?

Our team exists to let researchers focus more readily on their research rather than on the technical aspects of managing infrastructure. We help researchers do more and scale more than they would be able to do if they were leveraging other resources or trying to do it on their own.

We also emphasize the funding success we’ve had and the amount of funding we’ve brought into the institution. Investment in our team results in additional funding that our group directly brings into the institution and state.

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