Alex Cabral
Ecological monitoring participatory action scientist
Sensors and ecological monitoring
Projects:
- Air and water quality monitoring
- Manoomin
- Curriculum development
Alex Cabral is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Ka Moamoa Lab at the Georgia Institute of Technology, the ICICLE Institute, at CIAS, and with the Kaufman Lab in the Department of Planning and Landscape Architecture. Her research expertise lies in the development, deployment, and data visualization of participatory-designed, low-cost sensors to monitor environmental factors such as air pollution, noise, and water quality. She has worked with urban, rural, and Native American communities to deploy sensing systems and collect data in real-world settings. Before beginning her PhD program, Alex was a middle and high school Computer Science, Math, and Robotics educator and curriculum developer.
Working with the Lac Courte Oreilles band of Lake Superior Ojibwe, Alex Cabral is exploring ways to combine sensor data, Traditional Ecological Knowledge and information about present and historical food availability to assist Tribal food planning with machine learning to predict where manoomin (wild rice) and puhpohwee (mushrooms) may grow in the future. She is working with Tribal members to develop a tool kit for teachers on how to assemble and deploy environmental sensors to assist with monitoring for these crops. Alex is a joint Fellow with the Kaufman Lab in the Department of Planning and Landscape Architecture, CALS Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems, and ICICLE, an NSF AI Institute. She is a postdoctoral Fellow in the Ka Moamoa Lab at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Michelle Miller, a senior researcher and practicing economic anthropologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, serves as Cabral’s fellowship mentor.