You could say that Dustin Shindo is a man who’s always looking for the next big thing. The consummate entrepreneur, just 34 years old, has already created four companies from the ground-up — everything from a local brewery to a clean energy technology company with $1.6 billion in contracts— all with the purpose of making a difference in the world.

Shindo founded Mehana Brewing Company in 1995 and a travel activity company called Activitymax in 1999 (which he later disbanded). He is chairman of Kai Sensors, a wireless heart rate and respiration sensing company he co-founded in 2007 and he is the chairman, president and CEO of the clean energy company, Hoku Scientific, Inc., which was established in 2001.
It is at Hoku Scientific where Shindo’s energy is most focused these days.

Founded by Joanne Ninomiya in 1981, JN Productions, Inc. is a full-service media production house specializing in English, Japanese, Chinese, and Korean media services for clients around the world.

Over the years, Ninomiya and her staff have been awarded numerous accolades in the industry, always keeping up-to-date on the latest technologies, equipment and trends in the market. Today, the company’s customer base includes many national and international clients as the crew travels throughout Asia and the Pacific region producing videos.

In addition, JN Production’s translation department has flourished, primarily in the area of translating Japanese anime and manga (comic books) for the U.S. market. Other subtitle and voice over projects have been entered into prestigious competitions such as the Peabody Awards, Emmys and Cannes Film Festival. The company also produces the popular DVD box sets for Kikaida and Kamen Rider V3.

Love and a passion for nuclear engineering brought Dr. Karl Stahlkopf to Hawaii, around the world and back again.

As an undergraduate in college, Stahlkopf followed in the footsteps of his brother, studying electrical engineering not because it was his passion, but because he couldn’t think of anything better to do. After school, however, he went to work for the Navy on nuclear submarines and found that this was his true calling.

During his time in the Navy, Stahlkopf was stationed at Pearl Harbor on the USS Kamehameha. One week before a three-month deployment, he met the woman who would later become his wife. He asked her to marry him just two weeks after he returned home from sea. They’ve now been married more than 40 years.

Hawaii residents pay among the highest energy costs in the country. We are the most oil-dependent state in America — 90 percent dependent on imported fossil fuels for our energy needs. And with the looming threat of global warming, time is not on our side.

An aggressive new state and federal initiative, however, is looking to accelerate the transformation of Hawaii into one of the world’s first economies based primarily on clean energy resources such as wind, solar, ocean, geothermal and bioenergy. The state would also serve as a model for the rest of the nation.

Gov. Linda Lingle and U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Alexander Karsner signed a non-binding agreement in January to establish this “Hawaii Clean Energy Initiative.”

Through the Hawaii Clean Energy Initiative, the state will become a test bed for technology and a place for private companies to launch new ventures.

Listing: New homes for fish. Available immediately. Spacious, great floor plan, located in an excellent neighborhood. Open habitats include airplanes, shipwrecks, concrete pyramids and contemporary fiberglass structures. All dwellings have a spectacular ocean view.

For the last 50 years, some of Hawaii’s most beautiful natural reefs have been disappearing — reefs that are home to more than 7,000 known species of marine plants and animals, one-quarter of which are found nowhere else in the world. These coral reefs have been threatened by alien invasive species, overfishing, land-based pollution, ocean debris and detrimental climate changes.

Dr. Michael Cooney, an associate researcher at the Hawaii Natural Energy Institute at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, is hard at work trying to find a new microbial method to produce fats (lipids) that could both mitigate liquid waste and serve as an alternative source of energy.

Cooney has partnered with Mainland company Community Fuels on the project, which received a DOE Small Business Innovation Research grant to explore the processing of biodiesel from microalgae and yeast. Phase I of the project is now complete and Cooney is hoping the next phase of research will be funded so he can continue this important work.