Autism Employment Connector Challenge Winners Named

Businessman Kenneth DeRoche operates one of the most successful Amazon Delivery Service Providers in Massachusetts. Double D Delivers LLC is a logistics company that delivers Amazon packages across the Merrimack Valley region. Deeply involved in increasing awareness of autism, Kenneth DeRoche is a frequent contributor to Autism Speaks.

Autism Speaks is a nonprofit that promotes solutions across the spectrum and throughout the lifetime of people with autism and their families. Earlier this year, Autism Speaks launched the Autism Employment Connector Challenge in partnership with Herox, an open crowdsourcing platform. The Challenge is an event where innovators present solutions that support job seekers with autism in navigating the process of searching and applying for employment opportunities while highlighting their skills and abilities to employers.

In June, Autism Speaks and Herox announced the winners of the Challenge. The winners were as follows.

The grand prize winner was “Zensory-Blissful Job Searching for Autistic Adults,” which featured a website extension that includes tools that help adults with autism, such as a resume maker and photo and video uploader that is compatible with popular job search platforms. Zensory received a cash award of $15,000.

The second-prize winner was “JobQuest: One goal. One passion. Inclusivity!” This web-based job board design addresses the miscommunication and information-processing issues faced by people with autism in the job recruitment process. JobQuest received a cash award of $10,000.

The third-prize winner was “Autism Employment Matching Engine (AEME),” a candidate profile platform that features a robot that assists people with autism in creating and maintaining their accounts. It also incentivizes users who complete and regularly check and update their profiles. AEME received a cash award of $5,000.

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Autism Speaks Partners in Supporting Research on Austin’s Genetic Ties

Kenneth DeRoche is an industrial service manager who supervises a team of technicians and conducts project management while ensuring proper quality control. With a community focus, Kenneth DeRoche supports groups that enable health-care research, such as Autism Speaks.

One current collaboration of the nonprofit, in partnership with the University of Toronto, The Hospital for Sick Children, DNAstack, and Verily, fosters exploration into the genetics behind autism. Utilizing data from families living with autism, whole genome sequencing is employed in creating an autism database that includes deep phenotyping. Dubbed MSSNG, the project focuses on enabling better identification of subtypes of autism to improve diagnostics and facilitate personalized treatments.

According to The Hospital for Sick Children’s chief researcher, preliminary findings suggest that 90 percent of the causations for autism relate to genetic factors. One participant profiled, living with repeat sub-clinical seizures, has a rare genetic mutation that affects about 20 percent of those in MSSNG’s database. The project has collected data from over 12,000 families as of 2022.

For families with a child with autism, identifying genetic variations can help them anticipate outcomes and future needs. Once diagnosed with a genetic condition listed in the database, participating families connect with a genetic counselor for assistance with predicting behavioral trajectory and appropriate accommodations or interventions.

Through connections discerned by the program, medical scientists can study these genetic influencers and how different variations affect the brain. Their findings can subsequently guide research on targeted therapies and drug repurposing for treating severe debilitations, such as seizures.

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Two Techniques for Catching a Black Sea Bass

Based in Massachusetts, Kenneth DeRoche was a police officer in Lowell. Before that, he served as a plane captain/aviation electrician in the United States Navy. When he is not working, Kenneth DeRoche enjoys camping and fishing.

The black sea bass is a sport fish that can grow up to eight pounds and above. Usually, this fish is found in saltwater around the Atlantic Coast from Florida to Massachusetts. They are bottom feeders, and they prey on anything available. In terms of lifespan, a female black sea bass lives up to eight years while a male can live up to 12 years. Multiple techniques are used to catch the black sea bass, from gear to bait.

An example of one of these techniques is bait. This fish eats anything available to it, but they have favorites. Some include bloodworms, squid, clams, crabs, sandworms, and mussels. Using artificial bait like Z-Man Scented or Berkley Gulp can help.

Another technique is with gear. The most suggested type of gear is a 20-30 pound fishing line that helps for low stretch and sensitivity, a six to seven feet medium rod, a 3000-4000 pound spinning reel, and top and bottom rigs with hooks of four to eight ounces.

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The Plane Captain - A Most Critical Job

Kenneth DeRoche lives in Methuen, Massachusetts, and currently serves as a service manager for CVI, a position he’s held since 2019. He earned both his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in criminal justice from the University of Massachusetts, following which he served for ten years as a police officer for the city of Lowell, Massachusetts. Before attending college, Kenneth DeRoche served with the United States Navy as an aviation electrician and plane captain for the F/A-18C fighter aircraft.

One of the most demanding of all assignments on a US Navy aircraft carrier, a plane captain is responsible for overseeing the maintenance of all an aircraft’s operating systems and readiness, as well as checking fluid levels, cockpit conditions and ensuring that all bolts and fasteners are secure and that there are no foreign objects on the plane that could inhibit its performance.

Although plane captains generally aren’t qualified experts on any of the plane’s many complex systems, they’re highly trained and capable of identifying problems and communicating them to the electricians, mechanics, and other experts who perform the actual tasks. Many plane captains spend 12 to 18 hours per day working on their planes.

The plane captain is the central, most reliable source of information about an aircraft’s mission readiness, and the one on whom the pilot relies for the most accurate assessment. The plane captain coordinates pre-flight checks with the pilot and is the one person who gives the pilot the final approval to take off. Two names are stenciled on the aircraft’s body – the pilot’s and the plane captain’s.

Plane captains are often among a carrier’s most junior enlisted personnel, chosen for their aptitude, character, and skills by their commanders and trained intensely for at least three months before assuming their duties. They serve as plane captains for up to a year or more before moving into a more specialized occupation, in the process accumulating an encyclopedic knowledge of the aircraft as well as the squadron’s operation.