Katherine Burbank Email and Phone Number

The United States Ski Mountaineering Association (USSMA) is the national governing body for the sport of ski mountaineering racing, more commonly referred to as “skimo.”

The mission of the Cottonwood Canyons Foundation is to work to continuously improve the environments of Big and Little Cottonwood Canyons through education and stewardship programs. The Cottonwood Canyons are a critical and magnificent ecosystem, provide approximately 60% of the drinking water for Salt Lake City, and are a major economic engine for Utah’s ski industry. They are also located within one of the most highly-visited portions of National Forest, and therefore, experience high levels of use and recreational pressure.As the Education Director, I managed and created curriculum for year round environmental education programs catering to the Salt Lake community and local schools. And subsequently, I trained approximately 150 volunteers annually to execute these programs. CCF sees it as extremely important to educate the public, who utilize this area for recreation and rely on it daily for their drinking water, on the Canyons’ importance and how the public can help promote their ecological health. CCF also aims to provide our community with direct and hands-on ways that we can all give back to this environment through volunteering.

Westminster College is a small liberal arts institution in Salt Lake City, UT. There, I taught courses for Principles of Chemistry I and II, where I presented original lecture material, facilitated group work activities, and instructed laboratory sections. The focus of each course was on critical thinking and group work skills in addition to general chemistry. Process Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning (POGIL) was implemented in every lecture and laboratory section. Additionally, I developed and implemented new curriculum for general chemistry and designed an undergraduate inorganic chemistry course. Outside of the classroom, I was actively involved with community outreach. I taught lessons in basic chemistry to elementary school and middle school students both on and off of the Westminster campus.

My research addressed the environmental and health problems associated with uranium that extend beyond its radioactive properties. Hexavelent uranium is a common environmental contaminant found in drinking water and forms the dioxo-uranium cation, uranyl. Despite the potential importance of the interaction of uranyl with biologically relevant molecules, only limited molecular insight is available. However, the presence of uranyl in submicromolar concentrations affects ethanol metabolism in Pseudomonas spp. by displacing the native calcium cation of the pyrroloquinoline quinone (PQQ) cofactor. Accordingly, the interaction of uranyl with PQQ was used as a starting point to carry out both an in vitro and in silico analysis of uranyl and its interactions with biologically relevant cofactors and metabolites. My work on this interaction proposed a molecular mechanism of uranium toxicity in bacteria, and has relevance for uranium toxicity in many living systems. The structural insights from modeling have allowed for the expansion of the scope of potential uranium toxicity to other systems by considering the favorable coordination mode to pyridine nitrogen adjacent to carboxylic and/or carbonyl groups. Consequently, this discovery of uranium toxicity at submicromolar levels in bacteria provides relevance to serious environmental and public health issues in the light of current EPA regulation of 0.030 ppm uranium limit in drinking water.http://scholarworks.montana.edu/xmlui/handle/1/3407http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0162013414002931

As part of an honors thesis project, I synthesized an electron deficient alumoxane material that removed 15 micrograms of arsenic per liter of synthetic groundwater. Additionally, I was a laboratory assistant for general chemistry.

During my time as a summer undergraduate researcher, I modeled hydroamination reactions with Yttrium phosphinoamidate catalysts on a molecular mechanism level using Density Functional Theory.