January 2025 - Just had a paper accepted into Transactions on Haptics! Coming soon!
November 2024 - Successfully hosted the 2024 Laulima Symposium and Design Challenge at the RISE Center at UH Manoa!
October 2024 - Excited to be traveling to San Antonio for AISES National Conference 2024!
September 2024 - Just gave a talk at Honua Scholars' Dialogue Session!
September 2024 - Honua Scholars had a great time tabling at Purple Mai'a's Ea Hou Fest!
August 2024 - Had a great trip to IEEE ROMAN in Pasadena!
August 2024 - Featured in prime-time news on Hawaii News Now!
July 2024 - Had a great trip to Hawaii to talk with some community collaborators!
June 2024 - thankful to have been awarded a 10,000 dollar grant from the atherton family foundation!
June 2024 - Excited to announce that I've accepted a faculty position at UCLA! I will be starting in July 2025 as an Assistant Professor in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering!
May 2024 - We just received another huge round of funding from the Hawaii People's Fund Giving Project!
April 2024 - Had a great time attending the IEEE International conference on soft robotics in San Diego!
April 2024 - Excited to be giving out awards at the Hawaii State Science Fair!
April 2024 - Best technical paper finalist at IEEE Haptics Symposium 2024!
March 2024 - Honored to give a seminar talk at UCLA, Advancing Community-Driven Innovation in Haptics and Soft Robotics Research!
March 2024 - Honua Scholars had a great time tabling at Onizuka Day at University of Hawaii at West Oahu!
March 2024 - Honored to give a seminar talk at the University of Hawaii!
February 2024 - Excited to announce that Purple Mai'a and the Pacific Asian Center for Entrepreneurship will be sponsoring the Honua Scholars 2024 Proposal Competition!
February 2024 - Our paper, "Modeling and Experimental Verification of a Continuous Curvature-based Soft Growing Manipulator" was accepted in the IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters!
January 2024 - Had a great time giving a seminar talk at WSU entitled "Advancing Community-Focused Innovation in Haptics and Robotics Research"
January 2024 - Our paper, "Design and Evaluation of a Lightweight Soft Electrical Apple Harvesting Gripper" was accepted into the 2024 IEEE International Conference on Soft Robotics!
January 2024 - Our paper, "Design and Evaluation of a 3-DoF Haptic Device for Directional Shear Cues on the Forearm" was accepted into the IEEE Transactions on Haptics.
January 2024 - Our paper, "Reliability of Smartphone-Based Vibration Threshold Measurements" was accepted in the 2024 IEEE Haptics Symposium!
January 2024 - Happy to be serving on the work-in-progress editorial board for the 2024 IEEE Haptics Symposium!
December 2023 - Our paper, "A Comparative Analysis of Smartphone and Standard Tools for Touch Perception Assessment Across Multiple Body Sites" was accepted in the IEEE Transactions on Haptics!
September 2023 - Received the Washington Research Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship! Happy to receive this amazing award, providing 3 years of amazing funding as a postdoc!
August 2023 - Recognized with an AISES Sequoyah Fellowship (Lifetime AISES membership sponsored by Amazon). Thank you for this amazing award!
August 2023 - Defended and submitted my thesis! Now i'm an almost PhD!
July 2023 - We attended the World Haptics Conference in Delft! Amazing time!
June 2023 - We received another round of grants from the Diversity innovation fund at the Stanford VPGE for Honua Scholars!
May 2023 - Received the 2023 JEDI Graduation award from the School of Engineering!
May 2023 - We received another round of grants for Honua Scholars from Hawaii People's Fund! Thank you for your support!
April 2023 - Just got a paper accepted into the world haptics conference! see you in Delft, Netherlands in July!
April 2023 - Gave a talk at the Hawaii People's Fund Giving Project Meeting!
April 2023 - Gave a talk at the Onizuka Day event at UH West Oahu in a session entitled "Kilohana: Hawaiian Scientists are REAL!"
April 2023 - Judged in the Hawaii State Science and Engineering Fair as an Academy Judge and a Special Award Judge with Honua Scholars!
March 2023 - Passed my greenlight meeting! Its essentially my 2/3rds thesis defense with my committee!
February 2023 - Presented our poster on our new work using mobile phones to study reaction times at the eWear Annual Meeting!
December 2022 - Submitted a short TOH paper to WHC 2023!
November 2022 - Gave a talk to the Native Hawaiian and Indigenous Health and Healing class at UH West Oahu!
October 2022 - Best poster presentation award in the 'Large Scale Robot Skin: Perception, Interaction, and Control' workshop in IROS 2022!
October 2022 - Worked on recruiting new graduate students at SACNAS 2022 in San Juan, Puerto Rico!
October 2022 - Attended the American Indian Science and Engineering Society Lighting the Pathway to Faculty Careers Workshop at the National Conference in Palm Springs, California!
September 2022 - Presented my research to students in NSUR249 - Experimental Immersion in Neurosciences!
August 2022 - Honored to have been awarded the Aristocrat/VGT Scholarship!
August 2022 - Honored to have been awarded the Chevron Graduate Scholarship!
August 2022 - Excited to be organizing our Laulima Symposium on August 20 at the Kroc Center! We have Kai Kahele and David Hijirida coming to give keynotes!
August 2022 - Honored to have finished in 3rd place in Hawaii's Congressional Primary Election! We finished strong with over 6.1% of the votes and over 11% of the votes on Maui! We finished first out of all candidates who have never held an elected office! Also honored to have received so many endorsements, supporting my agenda to improve Hawaii's economy, education, and health by focusing on the environment and innovative technology. Thank you to all my supporters who sign waved and campaigned for me throughout Hawai'i.
August 2022 - Thankful to have been awarded the Intel Growing the Legacy Scholarship!
August 2022 - Thankful to have been awarded the GeoComply Scholarship!
July 2022 - We just got a paper accepted into IROS 2022!
July 2022 - We just got a paper accepted into BioRob 2022!
July 2022 - Excited to have received status with United Airlines! I am now a Premier Silver Member! Looking forward to the free economy plus, free checked bags, and many upgrades to come! Thankful for all the travel I took as a PhD student to get this far, but I hope that we can work to reduce our emissions in the future!
July 2022 - Thankful to have received our second year of funding from the Stanford Vice Provost for Graduate Education for our Diversity Innovation Fund project with Honua Scholars!
June 2022 - Honored to have presented my work on haptics and soft robotics to the Stanford Institutes of Medicine Summer Research Program's Bioengineering students!
June 2022 - Yay! We just received another grant from the Hawai'i People's Fund for general operations for the 2022-2023 year for Honua Scholars!
June 2022 - Yay! We just received another generous grant from the Hawaii People's Fund as part of their Giving Project! Almost $200,000 was awarded to us and organizations supported by changemakers in Hawaii!
May 2022 - Just travelled to Hamburg, Germany to present my work on a mobile-phone based system for sensory testing at Eurohaptics 2022!
May 2022 - Honored to receive Stanford's Community Impact Award!
April 2022 - Our paper, Ka Mālamalama O Ka Mahina: Building Pathways for Indigenous Lunar Science in Hawai'i has been published!
April 2022 - It's Official - I'm running for the US House of Representatives, District II in Hawaii! I'm the first candidate to file! Excited!
April 2022 - Yay! We just received a $200,000 seed grant from PHIND center at Stanford to work on a new health app!
March 2022 - Honored to be recognized as student of the month by the American Indian Science and Engineering Society!
March 2022 - Presented an invited talk as part of the American Indian Science and Engineering Society's Student Success College and Career Readiness Spring Webinar Series!
February 2022 - Invited to serve on a panel for a seminar talk at University of Hawaii (ME492), Graduate Student Life
January 2022 - I just started TAing for Introduction to Mechatronics, ME210 at Stanford!
January 2022 - Article by Harvard SEAS for my work with Honua Scholars!
January 2022 - Recognized as OUTSTANDING PROJECT in Andrew Ng's CS230: Deep Learning course!
October 2021 - We were featured in the AISES Winds of Change Magazine! Check out our article about Honua Scholars!
September 2021 - Honored to be one of the 10 Native Stem Enterprises to watch of 2021!
September 2021 - Thankful to have been accepted for the AISES ASSIST Travel Assistance and Professional Development Program!
September 2021 - Honored to have received the AISES Aristocrat/VGT Scholarship!
September 2021 - Honored to have received the AISES Intel Growing the Legacy Scholarship!
July 2021 - Honua Scholars hosted a "What is Graduate School?" STEMinar and a "How to write your NSF GRFP" workshop!
June 2021 - Honua Scholars received its first grant!!!! Mahalo to the Hawaii People's Fund for supporting our mission!
May 2021 - Our work-in-progress paper was accepted into the 2021 IEEE World Haptics Conference!
May 2021 - Honua Scholars hosted its first STEMinar with over 150 participants!
February 2021 - We received a Precision Health and Integrated Diagnostics (PHIND) grant for one of my research projects!
October 2020 - Honua Scholars started its first cohort of free 1:1 STEM tutoring!
August 2020 - I was chosen to be a member of Stanford School of Engineering's Equity and Inclusion Initiatives Active & Sustainable Partnerships for Inclusive Recruitment/Outreach in Engineering (ASPIRE) Team!
July 2020 - Our paper was chosen as a Best Paper Finalist at RoboSoft 2020!
June 2020 - I was selected to be a part of the American Indian Science and Engineering Society's Lighting the Pathway Program
April 2020 - Our ICRA 2020 paper was nominated as Best Human-Robot Interaction paper!
March 2020 - I was selected to be a Community Associate for Stanford starting this summer
March 2020 - Thankful to have been awarded the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship
January 2020 - My paper entitled "AFREEs: Active Fiber Reinforced Elastomeric Enclosures" was accepted into Robosoft
January 2020 - A paper I co-authored entitled "Human Interface for Teleoperated Object Manipulation with a Soft Growing Robot" got accepted into ICRA
May 2019 - I was accepted into the Stanford University Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute Mind, Brain, Computation, and Technology Training program! - Stanford University - Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute
March 2019 - My first conference paper entitled "3-DOF Wearable, Pneumatic Haptic Device to Deliver Normal, Shear, Vibration, and Torsion Feedback" was accepted into the World Haptics Conference
December 2018 - One of the papers I helped with got published - Current Biology - Closed Loop Control of Active Sensing Movements Regulates Sensory Slip
April 2018 - Happy to have received the Stanford Graduate Fellowship in Science and Engineering and the Stanford Enhancing Diversity in Graduate Education Fellowship! - 2018 VPGE Fellows - Stanford University
November 2017 - Some of my work was put in the JHU Bulletin - Johns Hopkins University Laboratory for Computational Sensing and Robotics - Active Sensing and Adaptive Control in Electric Fish Under Virtual Feedback
November 2017 - Finalist for best poster award - Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology - Division of Biomechanics Newsletter
October 2017 - My abstract entitled "A new experimental system to test how the brain learns novel locomotion dynamics" was accepted into the SICB National Conference
May 2016 - Our internship program got mentioned in the media - Maui Now - Students Named to High Tech Internships
April 2016 - My internship profile is online - Akamai Workforce Initiative Profile - Kyle Yoshida
August 2015 - One of my lab-mates published a blog on our summer work - University of Hawaii School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology - Bridging The Gap
December 2014 - Received the Kalino Foundation Scholarship - Kalino Foundation - Kalino Foundation Looks to Improve the Health of Hawaiians Through Education
November 2014 - We took a Hawaiian Language exam at Harvard - Oiwi TV - Community News - How the Hawaiian Language Got to Harvard, Harvard Crimson - Hawaiian Language Placement Test Offered for First Time in Three Decades
May 2014 - 4th place from the American Society for Microbiology at the International Science Fair - Hawaii State Department of Education - Hawaii Students Impress at 2014 Intel ISEF
April 2014 - We hosted the first TEDx event at my high school - TEDx Youth @ Kamehameha - Nature's First Green: Nurturing Passions
November 2013 - My results from my 2K swim - Turkey 2K Swim Results