Bio


Katie's research focuses on the impact of community-driven social interventions and infrastructure development on community and climate resilience in informal settlements. She's interested in advancing our operationalization of resilience to better inform community-based strategies, policy, and investment in urban transformation for vulnerable populations. She incorporates participatory methods essential for driving community-led efforts, ensuring a community's deep participation in every step of the iterative analysis, planning, and decision-making processes, alongside multi-sectoral partners and decision-makers. She employs a variety of unconventional data sources, including satellite imagery and citizen-sourced data to model the built and natural environment for geographical locations with limited conventional data.

Prior to Stanford, Katie studied data science and AI for Product Innovation at Duke University, where she obtained a Master of Engineering Management (MEM). She was a Sustainability Graduate Intern at Lyft, Inc., where she completed and rebuilt their 2020 Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Inventory and Report and designed an air quality model forecasting potential health benefits of EV adoption for underserved communities. She received an M.S. in Medical Science from the University of Colorado School of Medicine and a B.S. in Animal Science with Distinction in Research from Cornell University. Katie is a Dean's Graduate Scholar in the Doerr School of Sustainability, an Emerson Consequential Scholar with the Stanford Technology Ventures Program (STVP), a Graduate Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI (HAI), and a Stanford Dalai Lama Fellow.

Education & Certifications


  • M.S., Duke University, Engineering Management
  • M.S., University of Colorado School of Medicine, Medical Science
  • B.S., Cornell University, Animal Science, Pre-Medical Studies