Katherine Winchell

Katherine is a recent graduate of Western Washington University who has been working with the WWU Mars Group since Fall of 2014. Her work primarily concerns spectroscopy of Martian and Mars-analogue soils, and she has presented on her work at the Lunar and Planetary Science conference in 2017, the Geological Society of America conference in 2017, as well as Western’s Scholar’s week in 2016 and 2017. She has also attended a Mastcam-Z and Landing Site Workshop with Dr. Rice, and helped with the organization of the Mastcam-Z team meeting that WWU hosted in the summer of 2016. After graduation, Katherine plans to work in the private sector for several years. Katherine was also part of Western’s fencing team and several on-campus STEM clubs.

Outside of Western, Katherine is very involved with the Rebel Legion, a Lucasfilm affiliated organization that provides costumed Star Wars characters to community and charity events. Katherine enjoys using her scientific reasoning skills to think outside the box to come up with new ways to replicate the costumes and props we see in the Star Wars movies while keeping to a much more limited budget and a need for longevity of the pieces in mind.