Devin Chu’s life and career were literally written in the stars. Growing up in Hilo, he would often visit the library on weekends with his mother. While in the third grade, one of the books he discovered was Our Solar System, which got him fascinated with the neighboring planets and their differences from Earth.
The discovery was a life-changing moment for Chu and first set him on a course into the field of astronomy, then later on a return trajectory to his hometown to become astronomer-in-residence at the ʻImiloa Astronomy Center at the University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo.
As a child, Chu participated in as many opportunities as he could find, including the popular Journey Through the Universe astronomy education and outreach program and Future Flight Hawaiʻi. Chu often reached out to astronomers to gain their insight and advice on his high school research projects. Doug Simons, director of the Institute for Astronomy (IfA), fondly recalls Chu and how he indirectly helped to inspire the creation of the Maunakea Scholars (MKS) program years later.
“Before Maunakea Scholars, high school student access to the observatories was ad-hoc, mainly based on knowing someone who worked at the observatories or just cold-calling astronomers for advice on their science projects,” said Simons, who was director of the Gemini Observatory when he first met Chu. “We flipped things around five or six years later with the launch of the MKS program that went to the schools looking for students like Devin who wanted to do research using the most powerful collection of telescopes in the world.”
Full circle back to Hawaiʻi Island
After graduating from Hilo High School in 2010, Chu’s journey took him to Dartmouth College. In his second year, Chu was selected to participate in the Akamai Internship Program, which allowed him to return home for the summer to assist astronomers at the Gemini-North Observatory. The following summer, Chu received additional experience as an undergraduate research fellow at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He earned his bachelor of arts in physics and astronomy in 2014, then attended UCLA, where he earned his master of science and PhD in astronomy and astrophysics in 2016 and 2020, respectively.
As UH’s astronomer-in-residence at ʻImiloa, Chu is looking forward to immersing himself in the development of ʻImiloa’s curriculum, expansion of educational outreach programs, and further development of place-based partnerships with the community to get Hawaiʻi Island students interested in astronomy or other STEM-related fields. Chu will also play a significant role in UH’s new Space Science and Engineering Initiative.
“We learned about the Polynesian voyages in elementary school, and I remember thinking that travelling on the open ocean and settling on islands was one of the greatest feats of human ingenuity,” said Chu. “When ʻImiloa opened in middle school, it was great to learn about the connections between the stars and the constellations that I knew from Western science and how they played a major role in Polynesian wayfinding.”
For more on Chu, see this Noelo story. Noelo is UH’s research magazine from the Office of the Vice President for Research and Innovation.
