Dr. Kimberly Catton is a research scientist/professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at CSU. Her area of expertise is in biological fluid mechanics. Dr. Catton was born in Northern California where she attended the University of California at Davis. She earned a B.S. in Biological and Agricultural Engineering and a M.S. in Environmental Engineering. Her master’s research was on effectiveness of biofilters to remove low concentrations of nitric oxide from engine exhaust. Upon graduation, Dr. Catton worked as an engineering consultant for Carollo Engineers, a water and wastewater consulting firm, on wastewater treatment plant design and groundwater supply studies.

After receiving her professional engineering license (P.E.), she moved to Atlanta, Georgia to study environmental fluid mechanics and marine ecology as a NSF IGERT (Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship) fellow at the Georgia Institute of Technology. At Georgia Tech, she studied the small-scale fluid interactions of marine organisms in the context of ecological concepts such as predator-prey interactions and species success. Her recent work quantifies the mixing potential of zooplankton aggregations in the ocean. Dr. Catton is looking forward to new applications and collaborations at CSU that will allow her to broaden her work into the fields of freshwater ecology and environmental engineering.