Tuesday, March 24 2026, 4 - 5pm Georgia Museum of Art Auditorium Faculty visits The Institute of Native American Studies, the Department of Physics and Astronomy, and the Georgia Museum of Art invite you to a talk and Q&A with Dr. Kathryn Gardner-Vandy about her journey to planetary science and the vast library of knowledge contained in Choctaw stories. Kat Gardner-Vandy (Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma) is an Associate Professor of Aviation and Space at Oklahoma State University. She is a Geologist (BS 2005, University of Oklahoma), Planetary Scientist (PhD 2012, University of Arizona), and private pilot. Previously, she was a postdoctoral fellow at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History in the Division of Meteorites and a STEM Lab Instructor at Tulsa Community College. Kat is the PI of Native Earth | Native Sky, a program that co-creates with Native Nations in OK to make earth-sky curriculum. She is the President of the Native American Faculty and Staff Association at OSU, an alumna of the Sloan Indigenous Graduate Partnership, and was named a Native American 40 Under 40 by the NCAIED in 2022. Kat’s research interests include: earth and aerospace STEM education, Indigenous Ways of Knowing, meteoritics and cosmochemistry, and student pilot training. Kat and her husband live in Tulsa, OK with their four children and two dogs. Learn more about here work here: https://science.nasa.gov/sciact-team/native-earth-native-sky/ Kat Gardner-Vandy Oklahoma State University Native Earth Native Sky
