Dr. Kathryn (Katie) Dyl arrived at Curtin University in April 2012.  Her primary area of interest of research is meteorites; specifically, she studies how water may have interacted with primitive “space rocks” and what processes may have affected these objects while they were still part of a larger asteroid.  Originally from Buffalo, NY, USA, she first developed a fascination with space while working at the Buffalo Museum of Science.  Her summer job was to use telescopes to observe the Sun.  She received her B.S. in Geochemistry from the California Institute of Technology in 2004 and her Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 2011.  For her doctoral degree, her research involved shooting meteorites with lasers to measure whether there are signatures of water that would have been present 4.5 billion years ago.  In addition to pursuing this work further, she is also using the Australian Synchrotron in Melbourne, Victoria to map how elements are distributed in primitive meteorites.

So far she loves Australia, especially the kangaroos, Canal Rocks (in the SW), and snorkelling on the Ningaloo Reef.