Deborah Kelley

Dr. Kelley played a leadership role in the design and operation of the underwater cabled component of the OOI, the Regional Cabled Array (RCA). She is the director of the RCA and oversees the UW School of Oceanography and Applied Physics Laboratory team that is responsible for the operations and maintenance of ~900 km of high power and bandwidth fiber optic cables that span the Juan de Fuca plate. The submarine network directly connects the Internet to >140 seafloor and instrumented water column moorings providing real-time streaming of data to shore and two-way communication. Her research focuses on understanding process linkages among active submarine volcanoes, hydrothermal vents, and the life that they support. As part of the RCA-UW VISIONS educational program, she has taken >150 undergraduate students to sea.