Kat Gardner-Vandy

Dr. Kat Gardner-Vandy (citizen of Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma) is an Associate Professor of Aviation and Space in the School of Educational Foundations, Leadership and Aviation. She is a Geologist (BS 2005, University of Oklahoma), Planetary Scientist (PhD 2012, University of Arizona), and private pilot (2005). Before coming to OSU in 2018 as a Teaching Assistant Professor, she was a postdoctoral research fellow at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History in the Division of Meteorites, a STEM Lab Instructor at Tulsa Community College, and an adjunct professor at OSU. Dr. GV is the Principal Investigator of the Native Earth | Native Sky program (funded by the NASA Science Activation program and Boeing). She is the President of the OSU Native American Faculty and Staff Association and was named a Native American 40 Under 40 by the National Center for American Indian Enterprise Development in 2022 and a Sequoyah Fellow of the American Indian Science and Engineering Society in 2025. Asteroid 14793 Gardner-Vandy (1975 SE₂) was named by the International Astronomical Union in her honor in 2026.

Research Interests:

Dr. Gardner-Vandy's research interests include STEM curriculum development with Native American nations, pilot training, aerospace workforce development, meteoritics, cosmochemistry, and experimental petrology.