Katherine Joy

Professor Katherine Joy is a leading academic in Lunar and Planetary Science at the University of Manchester’s Earth and Environmental Sciences department. She holds a Royal Society University Research Fellowship and is a Principal Investigator for NASA’s Apollo sample and meteorite programs. Her expertise spans lunar regolith analysis, remote sensing, and cosmochemistry, with contributions to missions like SMART-1, Chandrayaan-1, and BepiColombo. She is a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society and a member of the Meteoritical Society.

Education: BSc (Hons) Geology from Royal Holloway, University of London; PhD in Planetary Science from University College London. Research experience includes postdoctoral roles at the Natural History Museum, NASA’s Johnson Space Center, and the Lunar and Planetary Institute.

Research focuses on lunar geological history, using geochemical techniques to interpret sample data and remote sensing. Key areas include impact cratering, volcanic processes, and the integration of fieldwork (e.g., ANSMET in Antarctica) with laboratory analyses. She leads the Isotope Geochemistry and Cosmochemistry group and collaborates internationally on Artemis missions and lunar resource utilization.

Awards include NASA’s Early Career Award (2014) and the Royal Astronomical Society’s Geophysics Prize (2013). Her work contributes to UN Sustainable Development Goals related to scientific research and innovation.