Katrina Yezzi-Woodley is a National Science Foundation 2022 SBE Postdoctoral Research fellow at Colorado State University. Her research mentor is Dr. Michael Pante. Katrina earned her Ph.D in biological anthropology at the University of Minnesota. She is interested in how meat-eating impacted human behavioral evolution. Her research focuses on how early humans were breaking bones for marrow, especially in a landscape where they competed with threatening, large-bodied carnivores for food resources. Katrina uses 3D modeling, differential geometry, and machine learning to determine how animal bones were broken at archaeological sites and how to put them back together again.
In 2018, Katrina had the opportunity to present this research to patrons at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History through their Scientist Is In program.
Katrina is also the founder and executive director for Science and Social Studies Adventures (SASSA), a non-profit organization that connects diverse K-12 students and collegiate researchers to engage in community-based education and research. The vision of SASSA is a world where youth are excited and interested in socially engaged critical thinking and research, recognizing their ability to produce valuable knowledge, and feeling individual purpose and community connection.