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Having been born in Hawaiʻi but raised all his life in Tahiti, Keanu Rochette-Yu Tsuen says coming back to Hawaiʻi for college and attending the University of Hawaiʻi (UH) System was the “best decision of his life.” Rochette-Yu Tsuen attended Kapiʻolani Community College before transferring to UH Mānoa and graduating with his B.S. Global Environmental Science degree in December 2023. Currently, he is a UH Mānoa graduate student in oceanography.
One of the programs that enriched his undergraduate academic experience was Maximizing Access to Research Careers at the UH Manoa (MARC-UHM), based out of the UH John A. Burns School of Medicine (JABSOM). He recently won an award at the Annual Biomedical Research Conference for Minoritized Scientists (ABRCMS) for his presentation on detecting the presence of potential Leptospirosis-causing bacteria in He'eia Loko i‘a, an 800-year old fishpond in He‘eia, Hawaiʻi. He is hopeful that his research will aid in the prevention of disease transmission to those who work within the fishpond and in the watershed.
“We want local farmers to be able to do their work, revitalize traditional farming and promote traditional practices. Also, this can help support food resiliency in the state, and promote locally sourced food. But if they get sick, it's compromising these progressive ideas,” said Rochette-Yu Tsuen.
The work hits close to home as his grandparents are fishermen in Tahiti. Long-term, Rochette-Yu Tsuen hopes to continue doing research on marine ecosystems.
“My grandparents are fishermen so they've been living off marine ecosystems for their entire lives. It's important to monitor these ecosystems, especially at this large scale, because of climate change and anthropogenic pressures that keep increasing. It exacerbated the different challenges that we’re facing as an island nation,” said Rochette-Yu Tsuen.” We want to maintain our resiliency, and our autonomy to make sure that our future generations are able to benefit from the same resources that we have now.”
The goal of the MARC-UHM is to provide research training for UH Mānoa students that are historically underrepresented in the sciences.
As a Māʼohi (an indigenous person of French Polynesia) student, Rochette-Yu Tsuen says he found a lot of support from MARC-UHM and expresses his appreciation for the program's active learning opportunities and the monthly meetings with fellow MARC scholars. Without it, he says he doesnʻt know if he would have won the ABRCMS award.
“We receive a lot of feedback from the MARC-UHM mentors but also from our peers and I think that if I wasn’t in the MARC-UHM program, I donʻt think I would have been able to present at the ABRCMS conference,” said Rochette-Yu Tsuen. “The fact that I was able to train with people from JABSOM– that was an honor for me. They really built solid foundations for young researchers. Their support truly encouraged me to stay in science and continue doing research.”
Check out our exclusive Q&A with Keanu Rochette-Yu Tsuen about his research experiences with MARC-UHM and what drives his passion for science! For more info about the MARC-UHM program see their website.
Q: Congrats on winning an award for your research presentation at the ABRCMS conference! Was it a surprise to you?
A: Yes, actually! I initially was not interested in participating in the awards ceremony because I didn’t think I would make the cut. My project’s more in the realm of environmental microbiology, and I felt a little out of place. Other students have done amazing research that aligned more with the focus of ABRCMS (biomedical sciences), so I didn’t know if the judges would find interest in my project. It was thrilling and a little bit overwhelming. I didn’t know how to process the news. I was pretty shocked but very excited and proud!
Q: What was most valuable about attending the conference?
A: Honestly, the best part was talking to the other students that were presenting. I got to make friends and make connections with people with very varied research projects and expertise. Some of them were more of what you would expect in biomedical sciences: research on viruses and bacteria, understanding metabolic pathways, developing technologies to detect early onsets of cancer...etc. Others included studies on plants and symbiotic fungi that live in plants and how we can use them for medicinal purposes. My project was about detecting bacteria in the environment and because I have different interests, it sparked communication and other students got interested. Talking to these people, being aware of new research topics and what's being done in the field, it's very stimulating intellectually and you make pretty good friends at the end of it. Everyone was very excited to share their projects and it's important to nurture that passion for one another.
Q: Can you tell me more about your research?
A: Sure, my project is centered around a disease, Leptospirosis. Leptospirosis is a zoonotic disease that is transmitted from an animal to a human via the environment. The bacteria that causes the disease is Leptospira, it's in the family Leptospiraceae. We were working with community partners in the He'eia fishpond, Paepae O He'eia, to detect whether or not these bacteria are in the fishpond, for the purpose of (hopefully) preventing the transmission of disease and helping them manage their resources with the least exposure to the disease.
Q: Is leptospirosis something we should really be worried about, especially here in Hawaiʻi?
A: Leptospirosis is an emergent disease. The issue for Hawaiʻi is that the disease, because it's transmitted through water, can be a problem for people who do a lot of hiking,camping or recreational activities outdoors. Most importantly, there's a renewed interest in traditional agriculture, including the cultivation of taro. Taro farmers are actually the most at-risk population because they are most likely to come in contact with potentially contaminated water repeatedly. They're actively working the ʻāina and (getting) in the mud, so this exposure to the potential pathogen is greatly increased.
We want local farmers to be able to do their work, revitalize traditional farming and promote traditional practices. Also, this can help support food resiliency in the state, and promote locally sourced food. But if they get sick, it represents a public health concern and it's compromising these progressive ideas. So as much as possible, we should be taking care of our farmers.
Q: I like the sound of that. So the long-term goal is basically to protect people, especially farmers, so that we can safely return to traditional farming practices and sustainability?
A: Yes, pretty much. The way my lab does research is a little bit different than traditional labs, because we work closely with local communities and community organizations. We work with them because they have domain knowledge in working with their environment through traditional practices, we have domain knowledge in how to do scientific research. We really value their input, their concerns and their objectives– that will be the center of the research project. To show respect to the place and the local communities, each fieldwork starts with mele (chants). It is part of the protocols and it helps to ground the research.Science is a really great tool when it has a significant purpose, and for us it's to work together with local communities.
Q:Having been raised in Tahiti, how did you end up at the University of Hawaii?
A: I moved to Hawaii in 2017 and went to Kapi'olani Community College (KapCC). I was interested in science, and at the time, specifically, conservation biology. I started doing projects with different professors at KapCC. I worked with Dr. Wendy Kuntz, Professor Mike Ross and then a little bit with Dr. John Berestecky. They were my three main mentors at KapCC who heavily supported my debut in the research realm. My first steps in research at UH Mānoa were supported by Dr. Rosie Alegado. I got to do work with her grad student, Eric Tong, during an internship, on the genetics of reef species population in French Polynesia. Dr. Alegado allowed me to do my GES thesis in her lab, on Leptospirosis.
Initially, I wanted to study marine biology at UH Mānoa when I transferred but they told me about the global environmental science program, which was a bit more broad. Because I wasn't sure yet about what I wanted to do with my career, having a broader degree was kind of nice. It alleviated some of the pressure to decide. And because of the research project requirement, I thought it was a really good idea to have the chance to work with scientists and gain transferable skills for research. It prepared me for doing a master’s degree.I like to think that I have a solid foundation in how to do basic research: literature review, assessing protocols and lab techniques and writing. That was really appealing to me.
Q: How has MARC-UHM supported your academic journey?
A: My GES thesis advisor, Dr. Rosie Alegado, told me about the program. MARC-UHM helped to formalize the research process, in my opinion. MARC-UHM had multiple informational sessions and workshops to strengthen your skills in developing a research project. They went through all the steps of research: How to come up with an idea, finding the gaps in the project, formulating hypotheses and then developing a good research proposal. They also talked to us about grant application requirements to apply for funding from the National Institutes of Health.
We had informational sessions on different relevant topics in the health discipline, including the One Health concept and COVID-19. MARC-UHM funded part of my project and they funded my trip to the ABRCMS conference in Arizona. And when I needed to get lab experience, they were able to pair me with a person at JABSOM so that I could practice my skills and I was able to see how it's done. MARC-UHM has always been very accommodating to my needs and they were willing to provide the relevant resources to me.
Q: Can you tell me more about your plans as a graduate student at UH Mānoa?
A: I will be developing a project that is related to Tahiti, and French Polynesia in general. My current advisor is Dr. Craig Nelson and he works with the Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) program in Mo’orea, French Polynesia. I am interested in the biogeochemical cycles of lagoon ecosystems. We’re going to be looking at how human activities on land can impact coral reefs by studying nutrient fluxes, microbial exudates, microbial community changes…etc. We’ll compare these parameters between sites that have different human population density and also compare that data with archival data to evaluate changes over time. That’s my idea at least.
Q: Thank you so much for chatting with me. I’m so curious, what are your long-term goals in science?
A: Hopefully, I really want to be able to keep working in environmental science with French Polynesia in mind. It's a very big country, it's pretty much the size of Western Europe. There's active research being done by both American scientists and French scientists, but I would like to see more representation from the local people because we grew up there, we saw our lagoons change and we have closer relationships with those ecosystems than non-residents of French Polynesia.
I would like to do this kind of research on marine ecosystems because we live off of marine ecosystems. My grandparents are fishermen so they've been living off marine ecosystems for their entire lives. It's important to monitor these ecosystems, especially at this large scale, because of climate change and anthropogenic pressures that keep increasing. It exacerbated the different challenges that we’re facing as an island nation.
We want to maintain our resiliency, and our autonomy and make sure that our future generations are able to benefit from the same resources that we have now. So proper management and proper policies are really important. If I can do that, that would be awesome.