WHOI

In an exciting new partnership, Cape Abilities has teamed up with Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution to create jobs for people with disabilities and address one of today’s most pressing scientific issues.

As part of a National Science Foundation grant, a group of Cape Abilities participants recently completed a pilot project working in a lab at the Institution’s Woods Hole campus to create electrodes that are a key component of Magnetotelluric (MT) instruments used to collect data from deep in the earth. The instruments have been deployed in the Pacific Ocean south of Hawaii, and scientists are now analyzing the data. They have also been adapted for land use and tested in Africa, where data appears promising.

Senior Scientist Dr. Rob Evans, principal investigator on the NSF grant, turned to Cape Abilities as a means of incorporating people with disabilities into the project. Including that component helped him win the $1.5 million NSF grant to produce 20 new MT instruments, requiring 150 electrodes. The grant was funded by American Recovery and Reinvestment Act stimulus funding.

“This is the future,” Cape Abilities Executive Director Larry Thayer said. “A key part of our mission is to create jobs for people with disabilities, and we need to be doing that in the science and technology fields.”

This pilot project has paved the way for more partnerships between Cape Abilities and Woods Hole scientists: We are now working on a project to produce sediment traps for a study on wind erosion.