19 University of Hawai‘i at Manoa PhD students in botany, engineering and medicine were named 2025 Honolulu ARCS Scholars of the Year at the Achievement Rewards for College Scientists Award Banquet held May 5. Allie Hall, who uses fungi to improve survival of endangered nānū trees, Ty Shitanaka who explores algae cultivation and products, and Courtney Kurashima, who studies deleterious effects of heart medications on developing embryos, were recognized for their superior presentations at the Honolulu ARCS Scholar Symposium in April. Scholars of the Year receive $1,000 awards in addition to the $6,000 grants provided to all 19 Honolulu ARCS Scholars.
Learn more about the Scholars and link to short videos in which they describe their work
View photos from the banquet
Honolulu ARCS Scholar awards are made within six UH Manoa academic units. The 2025 Honolulu ARCS Scholars are:
COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING
Roxanne Balanay (Civil and Environmental Engineering), Brezlaff Foundation ARCS Award. The Maui High School graduate will test devices she designs to collect gas molecules on future space missions at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory this summer.
Joshua Dyogi (Civil and Environmental Engineering), Frederick M. Kresser ARCS Award. The Ewa Beach “building doctor” integrates machine learning with physics-based simulations to better predict the condition of buildings following earthquakes.
COLLEGE OF NATURAL SCIENCES
SCHOOL OF LIFE SCIENCES
Taylor Ely (Zoology), Dr. Jacqueline Maly ARCS Award. The National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow sequences environmental DNA from open ocean water samples to determine how marine species migrate between islands.
Allie Hall (Botany), Sarah Ann Martin ARCS Award and Wendy Lagareta Scholar of the Year award. The outdoor adventurer uses symbiotic fungus from native soils to increase the success of cultivating and replanting critically endangered nānū, native Hawaiian Gardenia trees.
Amir Van Gieson (Zoology), Maybelle F. Roth ARCS Award in Conservation Biology. The National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow studies the relationship between healthy and disturbed forests and the dozens of native cave arthropods that depend on the tree roots to carry nutrients into the caves.
OTHER NAURAL SCIENCES DEPARTMENTS
Jack McKee (Mathematics), George and Mona Elmore ARCS Award. A son of two teachers, Jack uses discrete differential geometry to express smooth surfaces that can only be approximated by computers. He grows oyster mushrooms in his spare time.
Jesse McDonald (Computer Sciences), Dr. Jacqueline Maly ARCS Award. The Idaho native and avid gamer uses a simulator to improve workflow to enhance the performance of supercomputers and the programs that run on them.
Grace Orellana (Chemistry), Sarah Ann Martin ARCS Award. The aspiring biochemist will work with leading researchers at Cambridge this summer on her research into the link between misfolding of protein molecules and obesity and other systemic disorders.
MARINE BIOLOGY GRADUATE PROGRAM (Joint program of the College of Natural Sciences and SOEST)
Anne Innes-Gold, Honolulu Chapter ARCS Award. Author of five first-author articles, Anne has demonstrated that restoring fish ponds increases the availability of ‘ama‘ama in the bordering estuary and that fish populations within the loko i‘a may be more resilient to ocean warming that those in the adjoining bay.
SCHOOL OF OCEAN AND EARTH SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY (SOEST)
Jade Comellas (Earth Sciences), Poorman Hoyt Stratford ARCS Award. The Santa Fe native studies images from the Perseverance rover’s SuperCam to look for traces of water interaction with rocks on Mars. She hopes to one day design and lead her own geological mission on Earth or to another planet.
Petra Byl (Oceanography), George and Mona Elmore ARCS Award. The Nashville native cultivates marine algae and giant algae-infecting viruses to test how changes in growing conditions influence the success of viral infections. She gave a talk on her findings at the Aquatic Virus Workshop in Banyuls, France this month.
Christina Comfort, (Oceanography), George and Mona Elmore ARCS Award. The Coopersburg, Penn., native and fire dancing aficionado has produced six first-author papers from her studies of run-off in the Ala Wai boat harbor, water circulation in Poka‘i Bay, and wastewater pollution in five O‘ahu watersheds under normal, heavy rain and king tide conditions.
Audrey Nash (Atmospheric Sciences), Ellen M. Koenig ARCS Award. The Ashville, N.C., native uses satellite data to plot rainfall during different phases of the Madden-Julian Oscillation, a phenomenon that is similar to and may influence El Niño, in order to improve long-term weather forecasting in Hawai‘i.
Tanner Hayes (Earth Sciences)Toby Lee ARCS Award. The Las Vegas horseman creates ices with salts and other materials, examines how infrared light reflects off them and compares the results with images of Jupiter’s moons to determine what’s on their surfaces.
INSTITUTE FOR ASTRONOMY
Zachary Bailey, Helen Jones Farrar ARCS Award, Award. The Bend, Ore., native uses images of the Sun’s corona that are captured during solar eclipses to study solar wind turbulence.
JOHN A. BURNS SCHOOL OF MEDICINE
Courtney Kehaulani Kurashima (Anatomy, Biochemistry and Physiology), E. Palmer Payne Memorial ARCS Award and Honolulu Chapter ARCS Scholar of the Year award. The Kapolei High School graduate uses stem cell technology to examine at the cellular level how heart medications taken by as many as one in three pregnant women can harm developing embryos.
Anna Nilsson (Cell and Molecular Biology), Guy Moulton Yates ARCS Award. The San Diego seeks to understand how diabetes disrupts communication between the brain and the heart, resulting in cardiac events that are a leading cause of death in people with diabetes.
COLLEGE OF TROPICAL AGRICULTURE AND HUMAN RESILIENCE
Kyle Marcelino, (Molecular Biosciences and Bioengineering), Ellen M. Koenig ARCS Award. The Waipahu High School graduate uses microbubbles 2,500 times smaller than a grain of salt to increase dissolved oxygen in aquaponic systems, thereby improving water quality, nutrient availability and crop yields..
Ty Shitanaka (Molecular Biosciences and Bioengineering), Helen Jones Farrar ARCS Award and George and Mona Elmore ARCS Scholar of the Year award. The Waimea High School graduate and former high school teacher uses microbubbles and recycles wastewater to create efficient and cost-effective production systems and explores novel biomaterials and bioenergy using the algae they produce.
