Dr. Cathy Olkin is a planetary scientist at Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado. Her main topic of research is the outer solar system, specifically planetary atmospheres and surfaces. She carries out ground-based observations to learn about the size and shape of small worlds as well as planetary atmospheres.

Dr. Olkin works on NASA’s New Horizons mission as the lead of one of the scientific instruments, the color camera and composition mapper. She is also the Deputy Principal Investigator for NASA’s Lucy mission. This will be the first spacecraft to visit the Trojan asteroids, asteroids that share an orbit with Jupiter and are the left over building blocks from planetary formation.