University of Hawai‘i at Manoa Professor Alika Maunakea was named ARCS Foundation Honolulu Chapterʻs ARCS Scientist of the Year in recognition of his groundbreaking work in epigenetics — gene-environment interactions that underlie disease development.

Funded by National Institutes of Health grants throughout his 20-plus year career, Dr. Maunakea has helped secure more than $27 million in extramural funding for UH Manoaʻs John A. Burns School of Medicine, where he established and oversees the Epigenomics Core Facility of Hawaiʻi. He has developed technologies to survey DNA modifications central to epigenetic processes and made other important contributions to the field.

Dr. Maunakea draws on his cultural background. As a youth, he watched his grandmother use traditional medicine to minister to the severe health problems of fellow Native Hawaiians. As a student, he became aware of the disproportionate rates of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cancer and other conditions within indigenous populations. His studies and research convinced him that genetic variability alone could not fully explain the disparity. He collaborates with a cadre of clinical, behavioral, economic, and health disparities researchers on various community-based biomedical research projects, including examination of socioecological determinants that influence gut microbial factors associated with diabetes and long-term impacts of trauma from the Maui wildfire.

He also mentors students (including 2022 ARCS Scholar Nina Allan) and promotes opportunities to ensure a student body and research workforce that iclude underrepresented groups.

Dr. Maunakea is a gradute of Creighton University and the University of California, San Francisco, and was a National Institutes of Health post-doctoral fellow before joining the UH Manoa faculty.