John "Keoni" Sai Keong Kauwe III (born April 10, 1980) is an American geneticist and academic administrator serving as the 11th president of Brigham Young University–Hawaii (BYU–Hawaii), a position he has held since July 1, 2020.

[3] Kauwe previously served as chair of the Department of Biology and as dean of Graduate Studies at Brigham Young University (BYU) in Provo, Utah.

[12] On May 12, 2020, Jeffrey R. Holland, chairman of the executive committee of the BYU–Hawaii Board of Trustees, announced that Kauwe would succeed John S. Tanner as the institution's president on July 1, 2020.

Holland presided at the inauguration, with the other members of the executive committee of the Board of Trustees, D. Todd Christofferson, Paul V. Johnson, and Jean B. Bingham, along with Clark G. Gilbert, commissioner of the Church Educational System, also attending.

[16] Kauwe currently serves on the Board of Directors of ‘Āina Momona, a Native Hawaiian led community organization dedicated to environmental sustainability, food security and resilience, and social justice.

[17] Kauwe is co-founder and Scientific Advisory Board chair of Halia Therapeutics, a biotechnology company focused on drug therapies for inflammatory disorders and neurological diseases.

His recent work in linking the Utah Population Database and Cache County Studies and developing reliable methods for pedigree identification has led to important findings about the relative risk for Alzheimer's disease and novel factors for its resilience.

[30][31][32][33] Kauwe has long maintained a relationship with Molokaʻi High School, his alma mater, including funded projects to provide scientific mentoring experiences and resources to teachers and students.