A Passion For Engineering

To be successful at anything, the most important attribute you need is to love what you're trying to be successful at. Tiger Woods, the number one professional golfer in the world, has loved the game of golf since he was a child. Britney Spears, one of the top pop entertainers around, loves to sing and perform in front of people. The same kind of love and passion can be used to describe how much Pearl City High School and University of Hawai`i College of Engineering alumni Aaron Oki loves his job as Deputy Manager of the Semiconductor Products Center at TRW, one of the top global producers of automotive, aerospace, and information technologies.

Aaron smiles as he talks about his job and engineering.

"If you ask anyone about me, the one thing they will tell you is that I love my job, and I really do," Aaron said. "Coming into work is exciting, fun, and a big challenge. It's never boring because it's constantly changing. We're always thinking about how we can improve some of the products and technologies we're working on."
At the TRW facilities in Redondo Beach, California, Aaron manages a department, which specializes in very advanced semiconductor electronics for space applications and the commercial market, especially wireless production, like cellular phones.
Perhaps one of Aaron's greatest engineering accomplishments at TRW was helping to improve an electronics device that many people own, the cellular phone.
Earlier generations of cellular phones (which were much larger in size back then, about the size of a 20 oz bottle of water) weren't very energy efficient, so those who owned these cellular phones would have to recharge them every single day.

Cellular phones are just one of the technologies Aaron has helped improve.

However, Aaron and his fellow engineers improved the transistor technologies to make the power amplifiers much more efficient. In other words, the batteries in certain cellular phones are now able to last a week or longer, before they need to be recharged. Which also means you can talk a lot longer with your friends and family.
However, Aaron admits the research doesn't stop there. They are currently working on the next generation of technology that will further extend the battery life of cellular phones. Also, they are trying to provide faster Internet access to homes and cellular phones.

Aaron holding up a product he helped develop

"If you ask anybody the question 'Is the Internet too slow?' their answer would be yes." Aaron said. "At TRW, that's one of the areas we're really focused on, to develop technologies that will increase the speed of the Internet a hundred times. The kinds of technology we're working on are faster transistors and integrated circuits to be able to provide faster data transfer to each individual through fiber optics, as well as wireless."
Despite all he's accomplished so far, Aaron is still amazed with engineering and what the future of engineering will bring. "Just look at what's been accomplished during my lifetime," Aaron said. "When I was small there were no camcorders, no cellular phones, no VCR, no personal computers. In the last few decades, the technology that engineers have developed have made a tremendous change in our daily lives."
"Over the next few decades there will be a greater advancement, due to the technologies that engineers are working on today. That's why I think engineering is an exciting, fun, and very much growing field that people might consider," Aaron said.