The Regents’ Medal for Excellence in Research is awarded by the University of Hawaiʻi Board of Regents in recognition of scholarly contributions that expand the boundaries of knowledge and enrich the lives of students and the community.
Sloan Coats
Sloan Coats is an assistant professor in the Department of Earth Sciences and an affiliate of the International Pacific Research Center at the UH Mānoa School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology. Coats joined UH Mānoa in November 2019, after holding postdoctoral and positions at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and the National Center for Atmospheric Research, as well as faculty roles at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
His research combines advanced statistical techniques, climate models and both observed and paleoclimatic data to investigate climate variability and change across timescales. A key aspect of Coats’s work is its interdisciplinary nature, reflected in his contributions to diverse fields such as glaciology and seismology.
In addition to his research, Coats is a passionate advocate for the broader research community at UH. He co-directs the NSF-funded Earth Sciences on Volcanic Islands Research Experiences for Undergraduates program, which provides undergraduate students with hands-on research experience in Earth sciences.
Matthieu Dubarry
Matthieu Dubarry is an associate researcher at the Hawaiʻi Natural Energy Institute (HNEI) in the UH Mānoa School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology. With more than 20 years of experience in renewable energy, he specializes in lithium-ion battery research.
He joined HNEI in 2005 as a postdoctoral fellow, analyzing the usage data from a fleet of electric vehicles. He was appointed to the faculty in 2010, where he has focused on battery testing, modeling and simulation.
Since 2014, Dubarry has led his own research group, supported by funding from federal agencies and industry partners. He is recognized for pioneering data-driven techniques to non-destructively assess lithium-ion battery degradation.
His work has produced a suite of software tools for predicting battery lifespan at both the cell and pack levels. His diagnostic model, ʻalawa—named for the Hawaiian word meaning “to diagnose with insight”—has earned global recognition and is used by universities and companies around the world.
Rick Kazman
Rick Kazman is the Danny and Elsa Lui Distinguished Professor of Information Technology Management at the UH Mānoa Shidler College of Business. His research focuses on software architecture, analysis tools and technical debt. He helped develop several influential methods and tools, including the Architecture Tradeoff Analysis Method, Titan and DV8, which are widely used to evaluate and improve the structure and maintainability of software systems.
Kazman has authored more than 250 publications, holds three patents and has written nine books, including Software Architecture in Practice, Technical Debt: How to Find It and Fix It and Designing Software Architectures: A Practical Approach. His work has been widely adopted by Fortune 1000 companies and cited more than 30,000 times, according to Google Scholar.
A leading figure in his field, Kazman currently serves on the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Computer Society’s Board of Governors. His contributions continue to shape industry best practices and advance the discipline of software engineering.
