Kiya is a rising senior at Oregon State University, where she is an Earth Systems Science major. Kiya participated in the NSF-REU program at Oregon State, where she studied glacial-interglacial climate variability as recorded in coastal margin marine sediments. She has continued the work as an undergraduate thesis and has presented her findings at GSA and AGU conferences. Kiya travels to us directly from Svalbard, where she has spent the past six months studying high arctic climate change and glacial hydrology. In her free time, Kiya loves backcountry skiing, spelunking, and photography. Kiya intends to pursue graduate work in polar climate studies, and is eager to spend the summer in DC learning how her future scientific work can best impact policymaking.

Kiya graduated from Oregon State and will begin her PhD program at Penn State in the fall of 2011. She will study subglacial hydrology with Dr. Richard Alley. (04/11)

Publications while at AGI: Unable to Break the Ice: U.S. Arctic Policy and Law of the Sea, The Professional Geologist, Nov/Dec 2010