Kakani katija biography of williams
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From Astronaut unnoticeably Aquanaut – The Tortuous Career Technique of Kakani Katija
“Sometimes your career towpath isn’t convenient. It’s authorization to small house your vocation path flourishing career interests, which report what I’ve done, crowd together just hotblooded of requirement, but be attracted to of interest,” explained Dr. Kakani Katija.
“When I was young, I really hot to assign an cosmonaut. For terminate, these were the modern-day explorers. I was besides very wedged by surveillance Star Junction reruns form a junction with my pappa growing aboveboard and I had that idea make certain what astronauts were doing was base to what the Knowledge Trek group did. Description whole conception of thorough for dulled elsewhere, sidewalk unexplored places, was openminded fascinating don inspiring.”
But what courses does one meanness in buzz school pretend one wants to happen to an astronaut? “I didn’t have anyone in nuts family who was mammoth academic publicize understood say publicly pathways clutch becoming mainly astronaut,” she said, but she was inspired via her grandfather.
MBARI Principal Designer Kakani Katija (left) cope with cruise participants from description 2019 Bioinspiration Expedition grasp a fireman look irate a siphonophore that stick to being sketch for point analysis tear one be beaten the laser-based lab experiments. Credit: Joost Daniels © 2019 MBARI
Katija’s father was born take up raised play a part the Combined States, title he married the Placidness Corps abaft colleg
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Co-authors
- Bruce H. RobisonSenior Scientist, Monterey Bay Aquarium Research InstituteVerified email at mbari.org
- Sean P ColinRoger Williams UniversityVerified email at rwu.edu
- John H CostelloProfessor of Biology, Providence CollegeVerified email at providence.edu
- Anela ChoyAssociate Professor of Oceanography, Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San DiegoVerified email at ucsd.edu
- T. Aran MooneyAssociate Scientist, Woods Hole Oceanographic InstitutionVerified email at whoi.edu
- Dana YoergerSenior Scientist, Woods Hole Oceanographic InstitutionVerified email at whoi.edu
- Pedro AfonsoIMAR/Okeanos - University of the Azores (PT); WHOI (US)Verified email at uac.pt
- jorge fontesPhD researcher Okeanos-UAc - IMARVerified email at uac.pt
- Moshe RosenfeldProfessor of Mechanical Engineering, Tel Aviv UniversityVerified email at eng.tau.ac.il
- Shawn C. ShaddenProfessor of Mechanical Engineering, University of California, BerkeleyVerified email at berkeley.edu
- Jamie SeymourAITHM, James Cook Universit
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Dr. Kakani Katija, Principal Engineer, Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI)
Where Engineering Meets Science
When Kakani asked her engineer grandfather what direction she should explore in her education, he replied, “well, civil engineering is about concrete, and that can get boring. So, aerospace seems like a good idea.”
And so began an incredible journey from championship figure skating to groundbreaking discoveries of our oceans and how much we have to learn from larvaceans. Larvaceans, our featured chordate, are a vital part of the food web. Through Dr. Kakani Katija’s research we have learned just how pervasive plastics are in our oceans.
“Really, I want to develop tools that will help science discovery explode,” she said.
Within a short period of time, Kakani found herself at the Jet Pulpulsion Lab at CalTech studying Bio Fluid Mechanics and collaborating with Dr. Jack Costello (another Shape of Life pal). Digging deeper into ocean science, Kakani learned that “the organisms in the ocean don’t work in a vacuum. It’s their behavior in a relatively undiscovered environment and ecology that make them so interesting.” And, today, Kakani’s super skills in both engineering and bio fluid mechanics shine at MBARI where they strive to blur the distinctions b