ONE WOULD BE HARD-PRESSED TO SAY that Devin Chu’s career and life were not literally written in the stars.
As a youngster growing up in the sleepy town of Hilo on Hawai‘i Island, Chu would often visit the library on weekends with his mother to check out various books. While in the third grade, one of the books he discovered was Our Solar System by Seymour Simon, 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 new course into the field of astronomy, then later on a return trajectory to his hometown to become astronomer-in-residence at the ‘Imiloa Astronomy Center (‘Imiloa) at the University of Hawai‘i at Hilo (UH Hilo).
Guided by his newfound interest and curiosity about space, Chu participated in as many opportunities as he could find on the subject, including the popular Journey Through the Universe astronomy education and outreach program that connects students with those in the Maunakea observatory community; and Future Flight Hawai‘i, a space-themed educational program designed to catalyze student interest in science, technology, engineering, and math via simulated space missions. Chu was a mainstay at Hawai‘i Island science fairs and frequently borrowed telescopes from the Department of Education to conduct his own astronomical observations.
Through sheer determination and effort, 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.”
After graduating from Hilo High School in 2010, Chu’s journey took him to Dartmouth College where his first physics class was taught by Professor Emeritus Gary Wegner, who proclaimed later in the semester that he was an astronomer. Intrigued by this revelation, Chu sought out and eventually collaborated with Wegner on a research project that convinced him to pursue observational astronomy — a branch of astronomy focused on collecting and analyzing data about the universe using telescopes and other instruments.
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 to learn more about the internal structure of variable stars by comparing the difference in the pulsation between ultraviolet and visible light observations. The following summer, Chu received additional experience in observational astronomy when he was selected as an undergraduate research fellow at the world-renowned NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). He received his Bachelor of Arts in physics and astronomy in 2014.
“Through my internship/fellowship at Gemini and JPL, I sharpened my skills in computerized data analysis and obtained valuable hands-on observatory experience,” said Chu. “I was also fortunate to be able to associate myself with a number of astronomers from the observatories growing up in Hilo and many others along the way who graciously and generously offered their time to help mentor and support me on my journey.”
Probably the most influential figure in Chu’s career is Professor Andrea Ghez, one of the world’s leading experts in observational astrophysics, head of the renowned Galactic Center Group at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), and winner of the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics for her discovery of a supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy using Newton’s laws of physics. Chu was invited to join the group shortly after his arrival at UCLA for graduate work and was able to return to Hawai‘i as part of the UCLA team involved in the Keck All-sky Precision Adaptive Optics project. He earned both his Master of Science and PhD in astronomy and astrophysics in 2016 and 2020, respectively.
“Andrea played a big role in my foundation and instilled in me the importance of doing the science correctly and not to be driven by the results,” said Chu, who remained on Ghez’s team as a postdoctoral researcher until recently taking the job at UH Hilo. “She emphasized the importance of taking the time to systematically understand the data sets and, rather than being motivated by what we want to find, trying to understand what nature is trying to tell us and communicating that effectively.”
As UH’s astronomer-in-residence at ‘Imiloa Astronomy Center, Chu is eager to apply Ghez’s philosophy as well as some of his own. While the extent of his duties are not entirely set, Chu is looking forward to immersing himself in the development of ‘Imiloa’s curriculum, expansion of educational outreach programs, and further development of place-based partnerships with the community to get Hawai‘i Island students interested in astronomy or other STEM-related fields.
“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 ‘Imiloa 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.”
With his interest in improving instrumentation and control systems, Chu will also play a significant role in UH’s new Space Science and Engineering Initiative, a collaborative effort among the College of Engineering at University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, IfA, and UH Hilo to support ground-based astronomy engineering research and development, and the creation of a STEM education and workforce development pipeline in Hawai‘i.
One thing for sure, Chu would definitely like to continue his research into the formation of stars near a black hole at the center of the galaxy. He is now able to do that from a place called home.