Katie Hearther

Katie Hearther is a junior at the University of Washington, Seattle campus pursuing a B.S. and double majoring in Oceanography and Marine Biology. She is also minoring in Arctic Studies, and traveled to Denmark and Greenland in August 2018 with the UW Study Abroad program to study the dynamics of the melting ice sheet and how climate change is directly affecting the citizens. Katie words as a Campus Tour Guide for the Admissions Office, and as a lab assistant in the Microbial Metabolomics Research Center, which relates to chemical oceanography. Katie is a member of the 2018 NOAA Hollings Scholarship class, which entails funding for her junior and senior year as well as a 10-week paid internship during the summer of 2019. She will be conducting research at the Kachemak Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve in Homer, Alaska, under the supervision of NOAA’s Office for Coastal Management. Katie is from Honolulu, Hawai’i and credits her father’s service in the Navy for initially inspiring her interest in the ocean. She is passionate about raising awareness of human effects on the environment such as climate change, ocean acidification, and plastic pollution. She hopes to earn a PhD and share her passion with others in order to inspire change for the better.