Dr. Katie Primm

Dr. Primm received her BS in Chemistry at the Univeristy of Central Arkansas and her MS and Ph.D. in Analytical Chemistry at the University of Colorado-Boulder. During graduate school her advisor was Dr. Margaret Tolbert where she worked on the brine and ice formation of pure perchlorate and chloride salts and mixtures with Mars regolith simulants and relevant minerals using Raman spectroscopy and microscopy. Dr. Primm also worked closely with Dr. Raina Gough, who is a part of the MSL Science team, to help constrain the hydration and dehydration of perchlorate and chloride salts. Shortly after her Ph.D. she worked with Dr. David Stillman at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder as a postdoc and studied these same salts using dielectric spectroscopy. Here she built a new Mars chamber that can remotely control humidity, temperature, and pressure while measuring the electrical properties of samples.