NSIN Celebrates Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month
This AAPI Heritage Month, our own Gloria Choo, NSIN University of Hawai'i Manoa University Program Director, talks about opportunities with our first Pacific Islander university partner.
As the third university program director in NSIN’s Pacific-South Region and its first at Pacific Islander university, Gloria Choo, has a specific vision for what she hopes to achieve throughout the region. Recently, Choo discussed her vision for NSIN as part of the Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month.
“The National Security Innovation Network at UH Manoa is serving as an innovative force multiplier,” Choo said. “We just completed our inaugural H4D and Capstone courses where our engineering students gained invaluable experience working with Aloha Sparks, MARFORPAC, and Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard.”
According to Choo, this industry-infused curriculum spearheaded by the College of Engineering was a great start to what lies ahead.
“We are currently planning NSIN’s Experts for UH Manoa, partnering professors and a military sponsor to work on challenges faced within Task Force Oceania. We recently supported the Office of Innovation and Commercialization SBIR 101 Speaker series by having NSIN’s SBIR experts to speak in two of their speaker series. “
Looking ahead to the 2021 Fall Semester, Choo is planning another Hacking for Defense iteration, Capstone, and other NSIN programming events.
“Our partnership with UH Manoa through the Office of Innovation and Commercialization aims to expand networks out in the Pacific,” Choo said.
In March, NSIN announced the selection of its inaugural university program director at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa (UH) as part of its commitment to the university and the region.
Choo, a UH Mānoa alumna, brings more than 15 years of experience from the Hawaiʻi Air National Guard and the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command to leverage the skills and talents at UH to help solve DoD’s most pressing problems. Choo manages defense-related innovation outreach and ecosystem development for UH and the state of Hawaiʻi.
About NSIN
The NSIN mission is to “build networks of innovators that generate new solutions to national security problems.” NSIN is headquartered in Arlington, VA, and has regional offices in 11 commercial innovation hubs throughout the United States. Through its headquarters, regional hubs, and embedded university partnerships, NSIN builds a national network of innovators and delivers programming that solves real-world, DoD problems through collaborative partnerships with non-traditional problem-solvers within the academic and early-stage venture communities.