Katy Quinn: Biography
I was born in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. My family soon
after moved up the coast to Newcastle where I lived until I was 10 years
old. We then moved to Adelaide, South Australia. I went to
Scotch College for high school. My father is a scientist in the field of
IVF, he joined the Australian brain drain when he was offered a job in the United
States. My twin sister and I stayed in Australia at Scotch as boarders for the last few
years of high school.
For undergradute studies I went to the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California,
where I received a bachelor of science degree in geophysics. Then
I did the Australian thing and took a year off, turns out not many Americans
do this. I was lucky to get a job in Antarctica over the summer with
one of my Caltech professors. We were studying ice stream mechanics
by drilling to the base of the ice, taking ice cores and bedrock samples,
and emplacing temperature probes and tiltmeters. After getting off
the ice I traveled around New Zealand and Australia, seeing family and
visiting all the places I never did when I lived there.
I then went to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston,
Massachusetts, for graduate school. I am about to defend my Ph.D.
in geophysics in April. My thesis research is primarily focused on
atmospheric delay corrections to satellite laser altimetry. I am
working on the NASA Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite (ICESat).
This mission will use a laser altimeter to accurately measure the topography
of the ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica, as well as the land and
ocean surfaces. The ICESat mission will determine
whether the polar ice sheets are growing or shrinking, and contributing
to sea level rise. Along the way I've also dabbled in other areas: GPS meteorology,
genetic algorithms applied to mantle viscosity modeling, inverse modeling of
crustal atmospheric pressure loading, optimal gridding of MOLA topography over the polar ice
caps with the goal of measuring elevation changes.
For my post-doctoral research I'd love to get more involved in comparative
planetology. When it comes to remote sensing the Earth is just another
planet, although obtaining ground truth is somewhat easier! Outside
of work most of my spare time is taken up by rugby. I play for Boston
Women's Rugby Football Club, one of the top ten teams in the nation, although
I'm on hiatus right now to concentrate on finishing up graduate school.
I also play softball and flag football. I love going hiking and backpacking,
the Sierra Nevada Mountains in California are a particular favourite although
I think to best hike I've ever done was in Tongoriro National Park, New
Zealand. I'm a member of the National Space Society and a founding
member of the Mars Society. I'm a true believer in the value of humans
in space - sociologically, scientifically, and spiritually. I plan on
applying to NASA's astronaut corps when I have my PhD thesis in hand. It's
a real long shot since oodles of highly qualified people apply but you have
to put your hat in the ring. The only way to fail for certain is to not
try in the first place.
-- March 18, 2001.
Picture of me in the White Mountains, New Hampshire, USA.
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