University of Hawaii at Manoa senior Caleb Olaso is looking forward to a full-ride scholarship to the Stanford Bioengineering Ph.D. program, a yearlong fellowship of fully funded scientific work abroad, and according to his UH Manoa research mentors, the bright future ahead of him.

But before high school, Olaso said, he didn’t realize making a career out of scientific research was a possibility.

“I didn’t know people got paid for doing research in a laboratory,” Olaso said. “I never had a very strong example of someone that was a scientist or a researcher or anyone in the medical field, so I never even knew that the field was an option.”

Now that he has successfully found his way into the scientific field, Olaso said he feels incredibly grateful for the educators who guided him throughout his journey.

Olaso grew up in Makakilo, in a two-bedroom house with his family of five. He spent his free time playing video games and reading books, while his father took him snorkeling, fishing or diving on weekends, he said.

Although his parents never spoke of their financial burdens to their children, they worked hard to keep food on the table, he said.

“Money-wise and time-wise, they’ve invested a lot into me,” he said. “You can sort of piece it together, growing up as a kid, that if your parents are gone for a long time, they’re working very long hours.”

After attending Kula Kaiapuni ‘o Waiau, a Hawaiian immersion school, from preschool through fifth grade, he continued his education at Hawaii Technology Academy, where he graduated from high school a year earlier than others his age.

Olaso knew that he wanted to pursue a bachelor’s degree, and began taking classes at Leeward Community College, where he declared a double major in marine biology and chemistry. Despite enrolling in a full-course load, he also got a full-time job at a nearby Petco and worked at his school as a science adviser tutoring, advising fellow students and doing scientific outreach to the community.

Once he began attending classes at UH Manoa, there was a time when he was taking classes at both LCC and the university while working full time at Petco and interning at the university’s research lab, he said. Olaso’s research mentor at the time, Margret McFall-Ngai, knew that he needed financial support, and she encouraged him to apply to the Maximizing Access to Research Careers program, which would pay him to do lab research at UH Manoa.

Once he was accepted, he was able to quit his job at Petco and pay his own college tuition for his last two years at UH Manoa.

His research mentors say that while they have come across many students with incredible potential, Olaso’s talent and dedication in the research lab is unmatched by any other undergraduate student they have encountered.

McFall-Ngai, Olaso’s former mentor, said that in the past 30 years, she has held tenured positions at the University of Southern California and University of Wisconsin, and currently works at the California Institute of Technology. She has worked with students from prestigious schools such as Harvard; however, none of the undergraduate students she’s worked with demonstrated as much skill as Olaso, she said.

By the end of his research project, he had become the first junior in her lab to become lead author of a research paper, McFall-Ngai said.

“Not only could he do the experiments, but he could do the writing of the paper,” she said. “And I can tell you, I don’t even have postdocs that can write as well as Caleb.”

Olaso’s current UH Manoa research mentor, Matthew Medeiros, said Olaso was the first undergraduate student to bring expertise and expansion of ideas into his lab on a level that is more comparable to a colleague rather than a student.

Additionally, Olaso maintains a 4.0 GPA, achieving A’s and A-pluses in all of his courses, Neurocrine Biosciences Health Economics & Outcomes Research director, Henry Cheng, told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser in an email. Cheng met Olaso at a scholarship seminar he spoke at in July 2022, and they have remained in touch since.

“He’s brilliant and accomplished and inspiring to a lot of degrees,” Medeiros said. “But he also is just this nice kid who likes to go fishing.”

Now that Olaso is wrapping up his senior year of college, he plans to defer graduation for a year in order to participate in the work-abroad program, which was awarded to him under the Henry Luce Scholars program. It will allow him to choose a country in Asia to work, as well as the field of work he’d like to participate in.

Olaso said he is considering working in either Nepal or Indonesia. And while he’s still uncertain which career path he’ll take after school, he has decided to diversify his work experience by exploring the field of science outreach.

The decision was inspired by the recent summer research program he did under Medeiros’ direction, he said.

“This was the first time I ever had to consider the relationship between science and the community at large,” Olaso said. “In Hawaii and in so many other parts of the world, the groups most affected by scientific research are not doing science. Fixing this problem is something Matt inspired me to do.”

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Linsey Dower covers ethnic and cultural affairs and is a corps member of Report for America, a national service organization that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues and communities.