Katie Springthorpe

Katie grew up in North Carolina, where she attended Salem College and earned her B.S. in Biology & Chemistry (2015). As an undergraduate she performed a variety of ecology research projects, including studying the effects of urbanization on bats in Nanjing, China and the impact of a coal ash spill on pollutant accumulation in arthropods in North Carolina. Katie attended the University of Texas at Austin for her Ph.D. in Chemistry (2021), with a focus in analytical chemistry. There, she developed a pollutant remediation platform that synergistically combined electroactive bacteria with redox-active metal-organic frameworks. After her doctoral studies, Katie joined a Bay Area biotechnology company, Zero Acre Farms, where she worked as a BioAnalytical Chemist to develop high throughput analyses for microbially-biosynthesized cooking oils. In 2024, Katie joined UGA's Department of Plant Biology as an Academic Professional Associate.