CV - Kat Volk

Grants and Fellowships
PI, Tools for Advanced Dynamical Characterization of Solar System Small Bodies, NASA Planetary Data Archiving, Restoration, and Tools (2022-2025)
Co-I, The Classical and Large-a Distant Solar System Survey: the Importance of Outer Resonances in Constraining Solar System History, NASA Solar System Observations (2023-2026, PI: R. Pike)
Co-I, Investigating Centaur surface colors: connecting surface transformation to thermal and dynamical history, NASA Solar System Observations (2023-2026, PI: E. Lilly)
PI, Constraining Neptune’s migration using the surface properties of resonant trans-Neptunian objects, NASA Emerging Worlds (2021-2024)
PI, Dynamics of sticky resonances and detached Kuiper belt objects, NASA Solar System Workings (2019-2023)
Co-I, Distribution of planet masses, planet-planet separations and dynamical lifetimes of planetary systems, NASA Exoplanet Research Program (2018-2021, PI: R. Malhotra)
Co-I, Kuiper Belt Dynamics with a Distant Unseen Planet, NSF (2018-2021, PI: R. Malhotra)
Co-I/Science PI, Current dynamics of Neptune’s distant mean motion resonances, NASA Solar System Workings (2015-2018, PI: R. Murray-Clay)
Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics National Fellowship (2013-2015)

Selected Invited Talks and Seminars
Using distant small body populations to reveal the solar system’s dynamical history, invited Rubin prize lecture, DDA meeting, 2023, Lansing, MI.
Orbital resonances in the outer solar system: dynamical details and their links to the solar system’s history, invited virtual talk, XXI Coloquio Brasileiro de Dinamica Orbital, December 2022.
Orbital resonances in the outer solar system: probing their surprising prevalence and using them to understand the solar systems history, Colloquium, Brigham Young University, November 2022, Provo, UT.
Using distant small body populations to reveal the solar system’s dynamical history, Virtual Seminar, Planetary Science Institute, March 2022 (link to recording)
Orbital resonances in the outer solar system: how they help reveal the solar system’s history, Virtual Colloquium for the Institute for Astronomy, University of Edinburgh, March 2021.
Active Centaurs in Context: understanding future members of the Jupiter family comets — invited plenary talk at DPS, October 2020. (link to recording)
Solar System Shake-up: how planet migration rearranged our system — invited talk at the Breakthrough Discuss Conference, April 2019, Berkeley, CA. (link to recording)
Combining theory and observations of trans-Neptunian objects to pin down Neptune’s migration history — Academica Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics Colloquium, March 2019, Taipei, Taiwan.

Selected Public Talks/Events
Interstellar Visitors: What We’ve Learned from 1I/’Oumuamua and 2I/Borisov — Virtual lecture for the Tallahassee Science Society, March 2021.
29P/SW1: An Active Centaur Reveals how Jupiter-Family Comets are Born — Space Drafts/Astronomy on Tap, December 2019, Tucson, AZ.
Exoplanet Extravaganza — Summer Star Party Talk, August 2018, Port Ludlow, WA.
Tales from the Outer Solar System — Astronomy on Tap Seattle, July 2018, Seattle, WA. (link to recording)

Selected Outreach
2024, 2023 Science City volunteer at the Tucson Festival of Books
2023, 2022 Evening lecture at the Grand Canyon South Rim Visitor Center
2017, 2016 Judge for the Southern Arizona Research, Science and Engineering Foundation Science Fair

Selected Professional Activities and Service
Chair of the Scientific Organizing Committee for the 2024 Division for Planetary Sciences Meeting
Member of the LSST Survey Cadence Optimization Committee (2023-present)
Member of the AAS Green Astronomy Task Force (2022-2023)
Past Chair of the Division on Dynamical Astronomy (2021-2022)
Chair of the Division on Dynamical Astronomy (2020-2021)
Vice Chair of the Division on Dynamical Astronomy (2019-2020)
Division on Dynamical Astronomy committee member (2017-2019)

Honors and Awards
Vera Rubin Early Career Prize, American Astronomical Society Division on Dynamical Astronomy (2022)
College of Science Outstanding Scholarship Award, University of Arizona (2013)
Gerard P. Kuiper Memorial Award, Lunar and Planetary Lab, University of Arizona (2013)
Galileo Circle Scholar, University of Arizona (2011, 2009)
Department of Planetary Sciences Services Award, University of Arizona (2010)
College of Science Graduate Teaching Assistant Award, University of Arizona (2007)
Department of Planetary Sciences Graduate Teaching Excellence Award, University of Arizona (2006)
Departmental Honors in Physics, Wittenberg University (2006)
Award for Excellence in the Russian Studies Program, Wittenberg University (2006)
Weaver Prize for Physics, Wittenberg University (2005)
Presidential Scholar, Wittenberg University

Professional Affiliations
Division for Planetary Sciences, American Astronomical Society
Division on Dynamical Astronomy, American Astronomical Society

Teaching Experience
Instructor, The University of Arizona
PTYS/ASTR 170B2 The Universe and Humanity: Origin and Destiny (Fall 2015)

Graduate Teaching Assistant, The University of Arizona
LASC 297a Teaching Teams Specialty Training Workshop (Instructor, Fall 2012)
LASC 297a Teaching Teams Specialty Training Workshop (Co-Instructor, Spring 2010)
LASC 297a Teaching Teams Specialty Training Workshop (Co-Instructor, Fall 2009)
PTYS 206 Golden Age of Planetary Exploration (TA, Spring 2009)
PTYS 206 Golden Age of Planetary Exploration (TA, Spring 2008)
NATS 101 Earth: Evolution of a Habitable World (TA, Fall 2006)