Kate Huntington received a BS in Geology and Economics from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and a PhD in Geology from MIT. Following a Postdoctoral Fellowship at Caltech, in 2008 she joined the faculty in the Department of Earth and Space Sciences at the University of Washington, where she holds the Endowed Professorship for the College of the Environment in Earth Systems. Kate is a geologist and geochemist who uses field-based, laboratory, and numerical modeling approaches to study how tectonics, erosion and climate interact to shape Earth's surface and crust, from deep time to human time. Her research team develops approaches using geochronology and clumped isotope geochemistry to examine paleoenvironments, surface processes, and the thermal evolution of the crust from Himalaya-Tibet to the Andes mountains and western North America. For her “extraordinary contributions to the application of geomorphological, geochemical, and geochronological observations to tectonic problems” she won the Donath Medal (Young Scientist Award) from the Geological Society of America. She is the recipient of a NSF CAREER Award and a Fellow of the Geological Society of America. Kate is currently serving on the Council of the Geological Society of America and on the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine CORES (Catalyzing Opportunities for Research in the Earth Sciences) Committee.
Katharine W. Huntington, née Ruhl
Endowed Professor for the College of the Environement in Earth Systems
Department of Earth & Space Sciences
University of Washington
Bio
CV - brief
RESEARCH INTERESTS
- Interactions of tectonics, erosion and climate in shaping Earth's surface and crust;
- Paleotopography, paleoclimate, diagenesis and fluid-fault interactions;
- Geochemistry, including geochronology, thermochronology and clumped isotope thermometry; field geology, geomorphology, structural geology, sedimentology, thermo-kinematic modeling, flood modeling.
EDUCATION
2006-2008 California Institute of Technology, Postdoc in Geology and Geochemistry
Ph.D., 2006 Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Geology
B.S., 2001 University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Geological Sciences and Economics
APPOINTMENTS
2019-present Professor, Dept. of Earth and Space Sciences, University of Washington
2018-present Endowed Professor for the College of the Environment in Earth Systems
2014-2019 Associate Professor, Dept. of Earth and Space Sciences, University of Washington
2008-2014 Assistant Professor, Dept. of Earth and Space Sciences, University of Washington
2006-2008 Geology Option Postdoctoral Fellow, Division of Geological and Planetary
Sciences, California Institute of Technology
2001-2006 Research/Teaching Asst., Dept. of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, MIT
1999-2000 Undergraduate Research Fellow, Geological Sciences, University of North Carolina
HONORS & AWARDS
Best Paper Award, Society for Sedimentary Geology - SEPM (2014); doi: 10.2110/jsr.2011.51
Fellow of the Geological Society of America (2013)
Bassett Distinguished Teaching Award (2013)
Donath Medal, Geological Society of America Young Scientist Award (2012)
NSF Early Career PI invitee to White House (2011)
NSF Geosciences Directorate Distinguished Lecturer (2011)
NSF CAREER Award (2010-2015)
Geological Society of America Bulletin Exceptional Reviewer (2009)
Geosphere Exceptional Reviewer (2009)
California Institute of Technology Postdoctoral Fellowship (2006-2007)
MIT Presidential Fellowship (2001-2002)
Cornell University Sage Fellowship (2001, declined)
Phi Beta Kappa (2001)
UNC Davies Scholar (1997-2001)
Op White Prize in Geological Sciences, UNC (2001)
Ingram Grant in Geological Sciences, UNC (2001)
North Carolina Science Opportunity Fellowship (1999)
GRANTS
NSF Geobiology & Low-Temperature Geochemistry Program EAR-1713275. ""EAGER: Reducing uncertainty in clumped isotope thermometry by evaluating the effect of 17O excess." 9/2017-8/2018: $69,304. PI Casey Saenger, Co-PIs Eric J. Steig, Katharine Huntington.
NSF Instrumentation and Facilities. EAR-XXXXXXX. "Collaborative Research: Development of Tunable Infrared Laser Direct Absorption Spectroscopy (TILDAS) for clumped isotope analysis of CO2." Start 7/2017, Co-PI with David Dettman and Jay Quade (U of Arizona) and David Nelson (Aerodyne).
Quaternary Research Center. "Paleoenvironmental constraints from paleosol-loess sequences: evaluating clumped (∆47) isotopic records in biogenic and pedogenic carbonate." 9/2016-11/2016: $5700, sole PI.
NSF Geomorphology and Land Use Dynamics Program EAR-1349279. “Impact of Quaternary megafloods on erosion of the Tsangpo River gorge, southeastern Tibet.”
4/15/2014 to 4/14/2017: $224,001, sole PI.
NSF Geobiology & Low-Temperature Geochemistry Program EAR-1252064 & 1342695. “Collaborative Research: Interpreting clumped isotope temperatures and d18O records from pedogenic carbonate: influence of climate, seasonality, and elevation.”
4/2013 to 3/2015: $170,709 (UW portion), Co-PI with Greg Hoke (Syracuse University).
NSF Instrumentation and Facilities Program EAR-1156134. “Early Career: acquisition of a gas-source isotope-ratio mass spectrometer for research and education in tectonics and paleoclimate.”
9/2012 to 8/2013: $365,362, sole PI.
NSF Tectonics Program EAR-0955309. “CAREER: The detrital record of focused rock uplift and exhumation, Northeast Indian Himalaya.”
5/2010 to 4/2015: $487,197, sole PI.
American Chemical Society Petroleum Research Fund grant #49704. “The use of carbonate ‘clumped isotope’ thermometry to quantify temperatures of burial and diagenesis from 0-200ºC.”
1/2010 to 12/2011: $100,000, sole PI.
Royalty Research Fund grant #65-2771. “Development of a sample preparation system for measurement of clumped isotopes in carbonate for paleoclimate and paleoelevation reconstructions.”
3/1/2010 to 2/28/2011: $35,503, sole PI.
SELECTED INVITED SEMINARS & TALKS
2020 (scheduled) University of Michigan
2019 American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting, Invited talk
2019 34th Himalaya-Karakoram-Tibet Workshop, Keynote
2019 Princeton University, Department seminar
2018 Chinese University of Geosciences Beijing, Lecture series
2018 Nanjing University, Nanjing, China, Invited talks
2018 Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, China, Invited talk
2018 Columbia University, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory Colloquium
2018 University of Texas Austin, DeFord Lecture and Lithospheric Dynamics Seminar
2018 Biannual Structural Geology & Tectonics Forum, Invited talk
2017 Geological Society of America Annual Meeting, Invited talk
2017 Canadian Geophysical Union, Vancouver Canada, Invited talk
2017 Utah State University, Forster Lectures
2017 Texas A&M University
2016 Universty of Utah
2016 Rice University
2016 University of Wollongong, Australia
2015 Oregon State University
2015 University of California Berkeley
2015 University of Oregon
2015 Syracuse University
2015 Weeks Lecture, University of Wisconsin Madison
2014 GSA annual meeting, Keynote
2014 University of Idaho
2014 4th Clumped Isotopes Workshop Keynote, ETH Zurich
2014 Goldschmidt Annual Meeting
2014 University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
2014 GSA Penrose Conference Keynote
2014 UC San Diego
2014 UCLA
2013 American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting
2013 GSA Pardee Keynote Symposium
2013 University of Texas at Austin, Bureau of Economic Geology
2013 Northwest Geological Society Research Symposium
2013 University of Washington, Tacoma
2012 Gold Medal Lecture, Geological Society of America National Meeting
2012 Lehigh University
2012 University of Arizona, GeoDaze Keynote Lecture
2012 University of Southern California
2012 University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
2012 Brigham Young University
2012 Western Washington University
2011 American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting
2011 Penn State University
2011 NSF Geosciences Directorate Distinguished Lecture
2011 Dickinson College, Potter Lecture, and Department Seminar
2011 University of California Santa Barbara
2010 American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting
2010 GSA Keynote Lecture, Structural Geology & Tectonics Division
2010 Central Washington University
2010 Washington State University
2009 American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting
2009 Yale University
2009 University of Colorado at Boulder
2009 AGU Joint Assembly, Toronto, Canada
2009 University of Wyoming
2009 University of Chicago
2008 University of Oregon
2008 University of Montana
2008 University of Southern California
2007 University of Washington
2007 California Institute of Technology
2007 California State University Long Beach
2006 Arizona State University
2006 Georgia Institute of Technology
2006 California State University Northridge
2006 Colorado College
2006 ExxonMobile Exploration Company Technical Exchange
2005 American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting
2005 Dickinson College