(Media release) — Matt Hamabata, executive director of The Kohala Center, has been honored with a 2009 Ho‘okele award by the Hawai‘i Community Foundation and Wallace Alexander Gerbode Foundation.

Matt Hamabata

Hamabata was one of four nonprofit leaders honored at the 8^th Annual Ho‘okele Awards, A Celebration of Hawai‘i’s Nonprofit Leaders luncheon today. Hamabata receives a $10,000 grant to be used for his professional development and renewal.

“Just as a steersman, ho‘okele, is key to guiding a canoe successfully to its destination, this award recognizes the significant and often less visible role that a nonprofit leader plays in improving the quality of life for Hawai‘i’s people,” said Christine Van Bergeijk, vice president of programs for the Hawai‘i Community Foundation. Read the rest of this entry »

Photo Courtesy of TMT

“In the final analysis, the board selected Mauna Kea as the site for Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT). The atmospheric conditions, low average temperatures, and very low humidity will open an exciting new discovery space using adaptive optics and infrared observations. Working in concert with the partners’ existing facilities on Mauna Kea will further expand the opportunities for discoveries.” —  Edward Stone, Caltech’s Morrisroe Professor of Physics and vice chairman of the TMT board.

Mauna Kea has been chosen for TMT project, which is an international partnership among the California Institute of Technology, the University of California, the Association of Canadian Universities for Research in Astronomy (ACURA), and the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ), for the largest telescope in the world.

TMT chose Mauna Kea over Chile’s Cerro Armazones mountain.  But it’s not that simple and far from a done deal.

Harvard University student researcher Juni Muskrat in the last year prepared a paper entitled, The Pluralism Project, in which he juxtaposed the mountain’s sacredness with the science occurring at its summit and helped to simplify this complicated struggle. Read the rest of this entry »